Laurie Klein Reads The Time is Midnight

Editor’s Note: “Poems to Listen By” is an audio series where over time we will explore some of the themes in the Poet Laura checklist, as well as Tweetspeak’s “Perspective” theme throughout 2022.

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Poems to Listen By: Moonstruck 08—The Time is Midnight

Presented by Laurie Klein

Welcome! This is “Poems to Listen By.” I’m Laurie Klein, here with our new series: “Moonstruck.”

If we earthlings were to live without the moon, a single day on earth would only last 6-12 hours. A year could last more than 1,000 days.

In today’s poem, Marjorie Maddox moves seamlessly back and forth between past, present, and future. Her father has died. Her daughter is newly born.

The Time Is Midnight

My dead father hiccups up the stairs,
down the hall, in my daughter’s sleep,
startles her waking, startles me,
with those twins of absence/
presence, staccato air studded
where he isn’t, where she is. Which
one of us cries “dada” in the half-light
of street lamps, manmade moons
we howl after as time climbs over
to another date? What we hold
is ourselves holding on,
the language of letting go
un-tongued in our infant mouths.
I am crying. I am crying.
I am cradling the dear voice
of my child’s stirring,
the deep past of my childhood weeping,
rocking all midnights to sleep.

—Marjorie Maddox

Perhaps you’ve experienced a similar blurring of time.

I’d like to propose a quiet toast today, for all who grieve: my words followed by those of novelist William Kent
Krueger:

The next time you walk at midnight remembering someone you love, may your “shadows glide before you,
black boats on a silver sea of moonlight.”

You’ve just heard, The Time Is Midnight by Marjorie Maddox, and a line written by William Kent Krueger, from his novel, Ordinary Grace.

I’m Laurie Klein. Thanks for listening.

Photo by cleò, Creative Commons license via Flickr. 
“The Time is Midnight,” by Marjorie Maddox, from Local News from Someplace Else, Wipf & Stock, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers (August 14, 2015). Used by permission. Excerpt from Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger. Audio and script by Laurie Klein with thanks to Pat Stien for direction. “Simple Gifts” (public domain). Musical performance, recording, and mastering, by Bill Klein.

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Laurie Klein

Laurie Klein inherited her mother's passion for reading aloud. Despite mispronouncing "manure" in Mrs. Englebert's 4th grade class—to hooting derision from classmates as she read Charlotte's Web—she later pursued Theatre Arts at Whitworth University, in Spokane, Washington. "Can you teach me to play 100 characters?" she asked. They did. To this day, Professor Emeritus Pat Stien (now 93), continues to mentor Laurie (soon-to-be 69). As with writing, one never masters the art. Laurie's performance credits stateside and abroad include plays, one-woman shows, storytelling events, poetry readings, audiobooks, videos, and spoken word recordings for albums and public radio.

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