Ariella Green Week One: “Your Son Has a Beautiful Voice” by Sierra Demulder

                 Ariella Green Week One: “Your Son Has a Beautiful Voice” by Sierra Demulder

In choosing my poet for this assignment, I decided to base my picking on whether or not I liked the sound of the person’s name. I came across performance poet Sierra Demulder’s website. After I read her first poem, I became hooked. 

     Her poem titled “Your Son Has a Beautiful Voice” caught my attention first because of the beautiful, yet also simple wording of the title. At first glance, she’s essentially giving a compliment to the people who raised the boy she’s interested in. After reading the poem, I understood just how deeply she feels about this boy that she’s “...afraid [she] love[s] him enough to listen to it forever”. This boy lost his mother at a young age, and in a way, she is telling the mother that she did a wonderful job raising him, but how pained he was with her absence. 

     Demulder references the bible when speaking about his mother’s illness. He knew his mother’s time was near when the preacher discussed how “God giveth and especially of how God taketh away”. As a spiritual person, I believe G-d bestows gifts upon us, but certain gifts are not eternal which make you mad and appreciative of life at the same time. Also, Demulder begins many of her sentences with “How he…” , “How you…”, and “How the…” as a way to describe the order of events in her boyfriend’s life, and the way those events have not only affected her boyfriend’s life, but hers as well. I am assuming that she in some way is his support system, and the situation greatly pained her as well, but has made her love him almost unconditionally. They’ve grown closer because of it. 

   I was so inspired by her poem that I shared it with her, and she got a little emotional. It shows just how close of a bond a mother and son have, and how unique it is. When a little boy is born, the number one female in his life is his mother. Once he becomes a teenager, that all changes, and when he gets married, there will be another woman in his life to love him and take care of him. Sierra Demulder thanks this boy’s mother in her poem for all that she’s done for the boy in his life. Now, he has Sierra who will love him, even though love can be scary because life is not everlasting. 

Once, outside of an ice cream shop,
he told me how you got sick.
How he was ten years old and how
he used to fall asleep in the backseat
during the long drive up north
to the better hospital. How he knew
the end was near because that week,
the preacher spoke of how God giveth
and especially of how God taketh away.
How he woke up in the middle of that night,
in the middle of a dream, and walked into
your room. How you passed right then,
as if waiting for his permission to teach him
all that you could about life. How the crying
seemed to go on forever. How suddenly,
one day, it stopped and he has not
cried since. I fall asleep beside him now,
listening to the way his breath untangles
itself from the day, like you must have
when he was small or still do. He speaks
of you, but with the delicacy of recalling
a dream: not dwelling too long on the details,
as if fearful the memory might fade completely.
Your son has a beautiful voice. I am afraid
I love him enough to listen to it forever. 
I am afraid he loves me enough to cry if I leave.