She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.
I've never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.
But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more,
Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song.
(I Ask My Mother To Sing by Li-Young Lee.) **Beautiful nostalgic memories. The finer moments of life.
In the singing of mother and grandmother, it can be marked the longing for their home which it is in China. The poet too wants to be there. Homesickness and nostalgia pervade the poetic spirit of he poem.
wow what a beautiful rhyming, what a sweet thought.