IT'S APRIL AGAIN

Phew! After that Marathon effort in March, I had to take a little break. Luckily, our friends north and west of us are still behind our times, so we had to wait for the first prompt until the 2nd April. Yes, I know today's the 3rd. Here's my good excuse: last night we turned the clocks back an hour so I got enough sleep to think clearly!

Anyway, I think you will get two poems out of me as a reward for waiting. Yesterday, two things happened: I went to the local market and placed 50 flyers advertising our choir's Flood Relief Concert under windscreen wipers. And later, and compltely unrelated, a chunk of one of my well-filled molars broke off as I was eating dates. (They were soft squishy ones, too, and I was not trying to chew the pip!)

The first prompt for April's Poem-A-Day challenge is: "what got you here".

Poem 1

To this house
my mother's instinct brought me
To this poem
my father's teachings wrought me
To this broken tooth
their DNA unwinding
To this bed, and sleep
an extra hour worth finding.

Poem 2

Her schooldays spent singing along to ABC
for schools, stamping the floor to European tunes
piano lessons and practice even in the heat
the threat of fire, flood, death by drought.

A true as yet uncivilised Australian
without electricity, piped water, supermarket
she yet felt music as a living force, a food
and drink she could never get enough of.

Just like her father, whose lullabies at night
and harmonica's jaunty adventures;
who, once living in electrified towns,
would fill the house with symphony, concerto,

had filled her very cells with harmony,
rhythm, reading by sight, and a keen ear.

One day someone said she sang
out of tune, could not hold the note.

Never mind, she hid her love by singing
with school choirs, dancing to raw bands,
jazz in bars, uttering pure high sounds
while driving through forests, window down.

And then the epiphany: it was only
what an unremembered someone had said.
Not necessarily true. Who made that critic
God? She joined the local Gospel world

to worship once again the swirling colours
of music in her veins, the power of voice.
The leaflets advertise two choirs in concert
where contribution will be rejoiced.