Mum Dancing
Gloria Gaynor belts out I Will Survive
on the downstairs radio where mum’s alone
humming while she sways, dancing all her moves.
I want to ask her what the late-night crying means?
Why she stays? She twirls her skirt then meets my eye
and then I’m dancing too and it’s like our home
has lost its shadows, and all the silences withdrew,
if only for the length of one song.
It was my mum in some other woman’s clothes,
not my mother, but the person beyond,
like a swan, shocking the air as she rose,
with a sudden, wide opening of her wingspan,
clapping the wind with each stroke as she lifts,
straining skyward, as far as she can.