#MIDDLEBURY
Name That Tune
Jennifer L. Knox
Lately my 84-year-old mother’s been
hearing noises: a party in the street below
her bedroom window – gruff men cursing,
a woman’s shrieking laughter, beer cans going
“dink” off the concrete. Finally she got the nerve
to peek out: nothing but a street light. Sounds
coming from inside her, she says: pops, clicks,
swooshes, gongs, alarms, heavy steps pounding
through her as if someone’s stumbling around
on the roof. Her cellphone rings. “Hello?” No
answer from its flat, gray face. A fist pounding
on the door she never used to lock – so hard she
feared the wood would split – but the peephole:
empty. A voice in the middle of the night: “Joann!” –
impatient to get her attention, clear as day, she said.
“That must be terrifying,” I said. She giggled,
“I don’t know but it was really something!
You know that poem ‘I Sing the Body Electric’?”
“Of course. Did you recognize the voice?” I asked.
“It must’ve been my mother because she called me
‘Joann!'” she imitated her mother’s scolding voice
“in just that way.” “A woman?” I asked. “Yes,
and a stranger might call me, ‘Jody.'” “Yes,”
I agreed, so at least it’s someone who knows her.
About this poem
“My mother moved to Ames, Iowa, last year. It’s the first time we’ve lived in the same town since I was 17. We spend a lot of afternoons together, driving around. When she told me this story, I asked her, ‘Do you mind if I write about this?’ ‘Not at all!’ she said, in her characteristically upbeat way. She also said that, according to her internet research, many seniors experience this phenomenon.” – Jennifer L. Knox
About Jennifer L. Knox
Jennifer L. Knox is the author of “Days of Shame & Failure” (Bloof Books, 2015). She is the curator of the Iowa Bird of Mouth project and teaches at Iowa State University.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Jennifer L. Knox. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
