Dawn Chorus is a mom poem, a celebration of sounds and noise as well as a reflection on what it means to be a mom and a woman.

Dawn Chorus – Mom Poem

5 am on Main Street, she couldn't hear the clank of her limp stiletto 
footsteps, drowning in the bleating of the winos, the squawking of 
early risers, the throbbing of the onset of a tolling headache. Every 
chiming scent, a puff of hot air clattering against the edge of her 
skull, a million miles from her eardrum, the voice of a man she 
barely knew, 
 
his fat forearms out of tune with his girlie hands now humming her 
up before banging her into a cab, his sighs soon bashed by the croak 
of the crow and the digital beep at the pedestrian crossing, lights red 
like the white of her eyes. The Cabbie grunted through her notes, cash, 
keys, a photograph of a baby and a verse, the line he'd been looking for 
so he could conduct her home and vibrato on. 
 
Outside, thick fumes, inside, the dumb smell of a night without stars, 
only cymbals and violins, piercings and probings, pokes gone wrong 
echoing the day's shrill drillings. The thump of her body hitting the oak 
floor in her lounge deafened the traffic and rang the bell.
 
Beats later, she purred along the soft choir of water drops belching 
against her skin and the clangour of black coffee whizzing her into the 
rhythm of her baby's babbling.