Before we ever spoke,
my mother and I
were a universe
of electric song:
We dreamt the frequency
of tsunami and supernova,
the rumble of a distant star,
a steady, repeating, familiar howl,
continuing before the page
of white noise was printed.
She telephones at work, midday –
Her voiceprint emerges
amid sheets of static.
I do not understand
what she is saying;
I cannot make sense
of the sounds. We
keep the line open
for four minutes.
There is too much interference now.
I hear the conversations
of all the other sons with their mothers;
A double-note of music,
a siren, a newsflash,
a call from a well, from deep wood,
from the back of a van,
shattering glass on the bathroom floor.
Scientists recline
on the hoods of their cars
in the desert and listen
to the sky through headphones,
their heartbeats join
the din of the universe,
the songs they sang
with their mothers.