The Authorities
(poem for a chorus of three women wearing black)

Voice One

What's that you say?
You don't like my daughter?
Well, who're you to pronounce judgment?
Just cause you're breathing?
You think you're allowed to have opinions?
Yeah?
On my daughter?
Lissen.

Voice Two

No one alive
is allowed to have an opinion
about my daughter.
Unless it's a good one. I said so, and
I ought to know.
I'm her mother.

Voice Three

A guy
shows up once,
has an opinion I don't like.
I tell him, put something else on yer mind, fella.
You don't know my daughter,
yer never gonna know my daughter,
an yer not welcome here.

Voice Two

And when he didn't listen,
when he refused to hear me--
I am, after all, her mother--
I sent him packing.
She didn't like it, though.
Deluded sweetheart, claimed I was interfering.

Voice Three

Oh, he comes back, that fella,
a few times, tries to see her.
But I'm ready for him. Ha!
Pretend to get the law on him.
When he took off ...
I thought she forgot him.
But then this new guy comes along,
and I guess she's of a mind to fly.

Voice One

She packed up her stuff
...took off with him.
But that don't make her bad!
Don't be sayin it do!

Elaine Batcher
North York, Ontario