Voices of Ice

Along the edge of the river, he squinted, 
but what he saw again was the face of his mother 
floating like a disc of ice. He waded in, 
kissing the cold wind, the song of 
the symphonies she used to play for him 
on the old Victrola, the scratchy music 
like the first note he screamed, 
waking from that dream 
of birth, of swimming upward through miles of murky water, 
listening and listening to the oval of her mouth, 
the song he first inhaled from her lips.