Confessional (found poem: Rain Taxi)

Out of Pamela a confession.
She does not beg:
haunting, her silence.
She wants to tell us, and she does,
keeping us always on edge.

She begins with water, remembers
her childhood and a girl under
the lavender of summer's fecundity.
The barrenness of March, in
the balance of the equinox,
lies in breathless trance,
starving for the season's turn.
the opportunity the season will have to define
itself evokes the turn. As it takes us
into the last word, it urges us to turn.

This brings us to an ominous source
deep within her that fountains up,
welling from the heart.
Remembering her mother at a swimming pool
where she felt alone, a mother bathes her daughter,
remembers exactly its fragrance of soap,
the grooming of a woman who flinched
in her nakedness, lived sequestered,
born into a home of secrets that confused
the lonely child.
But what is the truth going to be?

Thus a family has tried to keep hidden
a tragic event. She looks at
the aftermath of this tragedy,
the death of her mother.
Goodbye to the stoic form she has chosen.

In the final section the saving hinted at comes.
The mother's legacy: she cherished
her daughter who buried the family secret.
She now lets her words flow out,
as if in a stream of water. They convey the truth,
finally freed.