how to pronounce 'lilac'

{our lilac tree}

I have been thinking of my grandma especially much lately, living in this new house of lilacs & rhubarb & sparrows everywhere. The following is a poem-embryo thing that is not finished at all -- rather, this is the way it emerged out of my head & into my writing book, & hasn't been shaped or smoothed.

When we were moving in, everyone commented on our lilac tree in the backyard, as it was in its prime that weekend... It was lovely at night to press your nose up to the windowscreen & inhale until inebriated by the scent. Everyone would comment on it & I began to notice they all pronounced 'lilac' slightly differently. There was a whole spectrum of vowels; 'lai-leks' & 'lai-laks' & 'lai-liks' (In the song 'Lilac Wine', Nina Simone says 'lai-loks'!) but I noticed that my mother & my uncle pronounced it 'lai-luks' & everytime they said it I could hear my baba's voice, so clearly, echoing & echoing with such presence. & so I had a messy sort of memory come to me like this:

* * *

living in the house now that i am sure
she helped me find
night air of rainy grasses & honeysuckle
& bursting lilac tree
how she used to say ‘lilac’ as lai-luk
& how her son, he daughter still say it like that
beautiful aural inheritance at the root
of their tongues & how i can hear her voice still
her voice like a persistent pulsar
how the sounds shape the night air
that long ai lai-luk
how the sound shapes the earth
like her hands working loam in the garden
the poppies roses & cucumbers of summer
their sweet cool wrinkled skin like my cousin
& i sitting in the tin washtub, pea-pods plinking
against metal in cool water
remembers watching her strong legs moving under
the gusts of her skirt
the periwinkle veins blue & lacy intricacies
under her warm skin flowing so strong she moves
the earth with her hands caked on her golden ring
how she goes still shaping with her voice,
lilacs in bundles twigs wrapped in a washcloth given to me
in the front seat of the car her voice waving goodbye
sounding into the echoes of mud and loam the flowers
violet the roots absorbing the sound & growing from it
that earth she is in that earth now her hands moved
in her heart through the earth now, live little echo moving
through everything she makes growth
& i carry the seeds of sound in my voice & in my hands &
i say lai-luks as the sound shapes my hands my voice my heart