Tuesday Poem: Humming

Natalie’s humming.

The small cheeks inflate

and the eyes too, larger

and larger, the whites

alarming, the pupils bright as

cutlery, begging me

to guess what’s

pent up inside her, buzzing like

a hive of bees inside the

membrane of her cheeks, to allow her

to let it loose

in a woosh of air or spit or

a single unearthly note –

All I can do is stare at the dear

vibrating face, its perfect oscillations, a

familiar and unfamiliar

instrument. What has it seen, where

has it been? I am helpless

     as she teeters

on the chair,

inflating until there is no skin left to stretch,

no give in the eyeball, no feeling in her vibrating

lips, the buzz a thin high whine now –

and it’s then

that she rises bumpily into

the air.

                      I could grab at her ankle,

the hand with the dutch tattoo, but

I don’t. The hum – it is an engine.

She needs to go.

She needs to go. 


                             Mary McCallum




This is for Natalie, of course. The lovely girl who came to us one day to stay a while, a scarf wrapped round her dark hair, reminding me of a small bird. And who hummed and buzzed and eventually floated away, and came back, and hummed and buzzed and floated away, and came back...  It's what she does. There is a mooring rope of sorts we each hold onto, something fine that can't be seen.


Do go to the TUESDAY POEM hub - a blissful poem there by Anna Jackson. And then slide into the TP sidebar and all the other terrific poets and poems.