far

Poetry

Three Troubles

Terence P. Paré
issue seven

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Her mother told her trouble comes in threes.
And so it came to pass that when
The hurt of love and loss arrived
She took her child in her arms
To walk along the edge of sea —
The same where she once played
As her young mother, too, unwound a fretful heart —
And wound her newborn baby in her mother’s ancient shawl
Against the ebb and flow of dread.

It seemed she carried groceries,
A man who watched her thought, at first,
As she bore her swaddled bundle and passed
Before his shaded glance and passed again
Her stride in time with breakers
That threw themselves upon the sand and slackened back
Into the stirring of the sea.
The man was troubled, too, though the woman could not know.
Her ear was filled with sounds
Of waves, the rise and fall, the beginning
And ceasing, again beginning as her
Own breathing came and went and her baby’s did the same.

The man who watched her saw in time
The woman’s posture ease and wondered:
Did the child bring this peace
Or did they find it in the murmur of the sea,
Wave by wave —
Or all at once?