Call it phonographic memory
when every turn of conversation
recalls to mind another song.
Call it conditioned response
to thirty years of Sunday's hymns
hiccuping in your head through Tuesday.
Or blame it on breeding,
you children of mothers who sing.
Reared on jingles and arias,
you are unwitting musical echoes
of your mother's youth; you are
all the songs she wants not to forget.
When people wonder why even their flattest
comment becomes your occasion for singing,
say you are investing your sole inheritance--
not more nor less than half a refrain
as return on every remark.
Tell them your mother says
you do not have an annoying habit;
you have antiphonal brilliance.
You have been blessed with 
good repertoire, your mother says;
you are lyrically well-endowed.

From Our Bodies Remember (Sow's Ear Press, 1999).
Used here with the author's permission.