Patti Tana – String Poet

Harmonica

Late at night the house breathes
what sounds like harmonica chords
drifting across the prairie
to a wide river rolling through the night.

In her last months, my mother heard
a chorus in the basement
serenading her with songs
she sang as a girl.

I told her it was the celestial choir
practicing for when she joins them.
Together we’d sing “Beautiful Dreamer”
and “Shenandoah, I love your daughter”

Away, you rolling river.
O Shenandoah, I hear you calling
Roll away, you endless water

Patti Tana is the author of eight collections of poems, most recently Any Given Day (Whittier Publications, Inc., 2011). She is Professor Emerita of English at Nassau Community College (SUNY), editor of the Songs of Seasoned Women poetry anthology, and an associate editor of the Long Island Quarterly. The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association selected her as Long Island Poet of the Year 2009.