Poem: My Friend Reads to Her Children

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

My Friend Reads to Her Children

My friend reads the story of Beauty and the Beast 

to her two little girls, Caelan, five and Keene, two.  

Keene is dressed in a Princess Bella outfit, all pink

and sparkly.  A tiara sits on her curly blonde hair. 

Caelan is suddenly a grown-up little girl, articulate, 

solemn and sensitive. They both listen intently

and comment while my friend reads and I listen 

and enjoy the theatrical quality of her voice.  

When I was a child, my parents didn’t speak English 

so they couldn’t read stories to me, though my mother 

would sit us in the padded rocker next to the coal stove 

that heated the apartment, and tell us Italian folk tales 

that were as mesmerizing and frightening as Grimm’s 

grimmest tale.  In grammar school teachers would read 

and sometimes they’d read poems.

I loved the sound of the story read out loud by someone 

for whom English was a first language, and then one day 

I flipped on the radio that sat on the counter of the built-in 

china closet in that Paterson kitchen, and heard 

Sleeping Beauty read aloud by an actress.  

I loved hearing the story, the way the words drew me

into a world far removed from that Paterson kitchen 

and then every week I‘d sit for an hour listening 

to another story read by the beautiful actress 

and her beautiful voice.  

Even now, all these years later, I love stories read aloud.

I sit next to Caelan when her mother reads and I remember 

sitting with my son and daughter in my arms so many years ago, 

and I am gratified for the blessing of these children, the way

they reach out their arms to me when I arrive, the way they quarrel 

over who will sit next to me, the way they bring my own children 

back to me as though when Caelan puts her arms around me, 

my own daughter at four comes alive for me again, and the child 

I was, and sometimes can still be, is into a story, the way

I did when I listened to the radio in that 17th St. apartment 

while the coal stove crackled, and language was smooth 

and comforting as scented cream on my skin.  

---

Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.