Poem of the Week #32

Click

Mom has a theory she calls clicks—
flashes that stick in memory and come
unstuck when tripped by word or smell.

Today’s click: a picture in her mind of me,
age three, and a time I came upon a stripe
of light glinting along the edge of a table,

something about it, marvelous to me.
Was it the geometry? I don’t recall
the light, the angle, the table.

I don’t recall this ever happening,
but there it is in mom, so bright, she can
hand it to me. If she dreamed herself

a poet, she would write about the girl
beguiled by the stripe of light. But,
it would be her instead of me,

a shaft of light holding dust
in a stairwell, her own mother’s voice
calling, come down it’s time to eat.

Lisa Vihos