Julia Allison Beale

Mother's Song

Her strap rides over my breasts
passing on my right shoulder and across my back.
I hold her wound about me like a warm winter
blanket. She is weary, but the seams,
bound by my mother's hand, will
heave and wretch until one day her gut breaks
open, pouring out all that I have left to her
keeping. This I will gather up, and
my pockets will come alive.

Only then will I throw it out with the half eaten
Lemon Chicken I had for dinner and some
cracked, empty acorn shells. I could not
love some broken bag. What I love
must live in me, through me, in what I choose
to call mine. My bruised leather purse beats,
a pulse of time through veins, holding my
life in scribbled half poems and worn medical tape.
I feed these to my purse
    remembering small bedtime prayers,
                            half-whispered lullabies.
They sail through my childhood, cradling
injuries of mind and body.
Around them my leather purse
directs this bruised story.