Are you there, Mum? – Steve Smart

Are you there, Mum?

She could not fathom why he’d ask
his foolish question at three in the morning,
croaked but clear over no-man’s carpet.

She wanted to sleep, and she had a right,
stroked or not he was a grown man,  and
she was the children’s mum, not his.

Yes, I’m here. Then storytold in afterthought,
before he was gone and her stories broken,
What a funny thing – where else would I be? 

Odd to find it odd that he should signal,
passing dark but nearest, another navigator
on those uncertain ferries of long late nights.

Steve Smart is a poet and artist living in Scotland. His poems have been published in Poet’s Corner, Fat Damsel, and Ink, Sweat and Tears. Recent work includes ‘interstitial woodland’ poetry in collaboration with visual artist Tansy Lee Moir.
blog: https://stevedsmart.wordpress.com/
twitter: https://twitter.com/steveDsmart
web: http://www.artsci.co.uk/sds/