Starlight Sonata
Tonight starlight washes my bare shoulders the way
my grandmother once did as I sat in the bath long ago,
water from the wrung cloth always cooler, tickled
as she sang to me and splashed me and dubbed me
her shayna madela, her beautiful little girl, and I knew
that the unruly, prickly, threatening world held
a safe place I could call home—my grandmother’s heart.
I haven’t been in a tub tended by a beloved in years
but here under the great basin of the glittering cosmos,
all possible love showers over me like praise.
Lana Hechtman Ayers makes her home in an Oregon coastal town famous for its barking sea lions. As managing editor at three small presses, she has shepherded over a hundred thirty poetry collections into print. Her work appears in print and online journals such as Comstock Review, The London Reader, and Peregrine. Her most recent book, The Autobiography of Rain, is available from Fernwood Press. Visit her online at LanaAyers.com.
Amethyst Review 