Question

I Ask My Mother to Sing” by Li-Young Lee





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.