Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky.
—Chippewa, translated by Robert Bly
You have to love your baby.
I didn’t. Not the mornings
he woke, the wails already trembling
on his tiny rose lips. Not the twisting
and stiffening of his perfectly
muscled limbs. Not his face staining red
as he screamed in my arms.
Not the hours, not the days, not the
weeks nor months of bouncing
and rocking and swaying and swaddling.
I wanted to make it stop. I wanted
a different child, one that would
giggle and babble and gurgle and coo
and smile. It was only after I lost
my every hope and forgot my
last expectation that love came in
with its strong lungs and ferocious will
and it’s broken dreams, it arrived
looking only like the child I held,
not at all like the child I thought I wanted.
That’s a profound experience and insight…. rooted in life that seems universal. The Chippewa quote gives birth to your lovely poem….
I wish the child had been referred to as a person (who) instead of an object (that). Smile……
You are soooo right! I will rewrite that!
From: “comment-reply@wordpress.com” Reply-To: Date: Friday, January 16, 2015 at 2:45 PM To: Rosemerry Trommer Subject: [A Hundred Falling Veils] Comment: “Tonight I Can Write the Hardest Lines”
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“it’s” instead of “its” in second-from-last line. (i catch the same thing my own published writing.)
thank you for your honesty. other mothers will read this, and be able to forgive themselves for having felt the same. i especially like your journey from, “I wanted a different child,” to, “[love] arrived looking only like the child I held,not at all like the child I thought I wanted.”
Darn those its/it¹s! Thanks for the affirmation on the painful leap
From: “comment-reply@wordpress.com” Reply-To: Date: Friday, January 16, 2015 at 5:39 PM To: Rosemerry Trommer Subject: [A Hundred Falling Veils] Comment: “Tonight I Can Write the Hardest Lines”
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The title here is even more interesting than the quote, though I like that too. It sets up so well the struggle to come to the moment of the poem, and then the poem, of course, reveals the moment. Read this to your parenting class, they need to hear it.
thanks, David, the title is actually the first line from a Pablo Neruda poem
From: “comment-reply@wordpress.com” Reply-To: Date: Friday, January 16, 2015 at 7:26 PM To: Rosemerry Trommer Subject: [A Hundred Falling Veils] Comment: “Tonight I Can Write the Hardest Lines”
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