Hear Her Now (For my troubled Daughter)

by George Steiglitz

Hear her
golden and golden haired
speaking early
a gift to herself

screeching, petulant
crossed-eyes and brilliance
flinging small words everywhere, hurting
everyone--"She has," you said, "her own way of looking at
the world." And so the world believed you.
She believed you.
I believed you.
She has," you said, "her own voices
to listen to, her own anger, her own rage."

Hear her now,
shouting her rage into the ears of bureaucrats
thrusting her gifts into the furnace of her past.

"She is," you said, "only who she is. What else can she be?"

And I believed you.

Hear her now, caught in the storm she has become
the darkness she cultivates
as if it were nourishment
Her smiles break at the edges
Her eyes are a casket of noise--"She is," you said,
"so terribly bright."

And she was.

"She is," you said, "a poor thing."

And I believed you.

© 2000 by George Steiglitz

George Steiglitz lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.