WEBVTT

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Another poem for my mother
which she adored, of course.

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As you'll see there's
nothing but goodness in it.

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It's called Charlotte's Web
and is partly about that story

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that we probably all
were read by our parents.

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I'm sitting on the dock.

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My mother is reading to me.

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It is the summer
I killed leeches,

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curling them up with salt. It
is a summer I almost drowned.

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The summer I first
stepped out of my body,

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my hand touching a bolt of
wool in the Hudson's Bay store,

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while my brother
buys a China teacup.

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I cannot tell where my hand
stops and the fabric begins.

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From across the room, I am
touching the pale English downs

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of the cup's landscape.

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My mother is next to me holding
the fabric she will buy.

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I've entered other objects.

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I want to ask if she
knows what I mean.

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But suddenly the
current snaps off.

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I am not imprinted on the
cup my brother is holding.

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I left my skin and entered
several yards of red wool

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but I'm back.

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I'm inside.

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I can be removed from
the Hudson's Bay store

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without pain.

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We are on the dock.

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My mother reads Charlotte's
Web and stops when I cry.

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Darling, don't cry.

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Keep reading, keep
reading, I sob.

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The voice starts up
again, dry as hazelnuts.

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Slow voice that doesn't
try to get away.

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Voice that does what I want,
softly bringing the story I

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love.

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Voice with more ocean than
the ocean that laps near us.

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Voice, woman who cries for
the death of a spider too.

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Mother, we are on the
dock, rising and falling

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with fiction.

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