for parents of teenagers everywhere
planting flowers
all along the fence—
the fence is no less sturdy
Posts Tagged ‘mother’
One Boundary
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boundary, fence, mother, parenting, poem, poetry on June 16, 2018| Leave a Comment »
My Nine-Year-Old Daughter Reads Emily Dickinson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, emily dickinson, literature, magic, mother, poem, poetry, reading on June 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Mom, she says, I don’t know what it was about that book,
but the pages were falling out and it smelled old
and I think it cast a spell on me.
And I recall the first time I read Emily,
an old cloth book with the text debossed,
how I ran my fingers over the words
and felt them as I read them:
“As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—”
Mom, she says, I didn’t even understand
a single word I read, but I couldn’t stop reading.
And now, I think that book is haunting me.
We are making her bed just before she sleeps,
and I tug on the covers to straighten them.
Yes, I say, her words are like spells.
I memorized that poem, though I was
too young to know of “courteous
and harrowing grace.” I knew only
that when I said the words, they gave
me such an openness, a wideness, a delight,
as if morning found its way into my chest,
and now, thirty years later, the early light
still touches me, still thralls.
The bed remade, she slips beneath
and I lay at her feet and for a time we read.
I want to talk more about Emily,
but the spell is her own and I don’t
want to trespass her magic,
the wonder she feels.
Perhaps someday she, too,
will read these lines,
“Our Summer made her light escape
into the beautiful.”
and know herself more beautiful
for having let them touch her.
As My Son Reads Lord of the Flies, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, Lord of the Flies, mother, poem, poetry, school shootings, son on June 6, 2018| Leave a Comment »
when I was young and read Lord of the Flies,
and when I read the part where Piggy dies,
I screamed out loud, You got it wrong. No!
As if Golding could hear me through the spine.
Perhaps because I also was a geek.
Perhaps because I didn’t want to know
how cruel the world can be. How kids like me
could choose, in fearful times, to kill our friends.
My son detests the book, but not because
the boys are cruel, because it moves too slow.
I try to reconcile his callousness, his good
and tender heart. He’s grown up in an age
where killing is a part of weekly life.
How strange for me to grieve the loss of grief.
The Step Mother Confesses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, love, mother, poem, poetry, step mother on June 4, 2018| 2 Comments »
for Shawnee
This time the goodbye is in the kitchen,
me running off to the next thing,
you at the counter with morning tea
before you drive away.
I give you a hug from behind
and a kiss on your cheek and thank you
for coming to visit.
I want to tell you I love you,
but the words have never
tumbled out easily, not because
they aren’t true, but because
I don’t want to frighten you.
Strange to feel I must hold you at a distance
in order to keep you close,
like a mother bird
who monitors her nestling
from a neighboring tree.
I never was one of the mothers
who worry about fatal things:
car crashes, avalanche, infectious disease.
I worry more about the most
terrible thing that could happen,
that you could be alive and not know how
much I love you, fiercely, unfoldingly,
worry my longing
to keep you at ease could
make you feel pushed away.
Driving from the house,
it is not the sun in my eyes
that makes them leak,
it’s this knowing that I
have made for you a nest
in my heart where I hold you,
but perhaps what you needed all these years
was for me to hold your real hand,
to wrap my real arms around
where your wings would be.
Thirteen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boundaries, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, son, teenager on May 23, 2018| 4 Comments »
There are many kinds of love, and I have lived some of them.
—Katherine Gallagher, Distances
You’re too restrictive,
he shouts at you,
and the fist of his voice
connects with your most tender parts.
There was a time
when loving him looked
like holding him, letting
the small question of his body
soften into yours. There
was a time when loving him
looked like kissing a knee
or playing Monopoly
a third time or singing
to him in the dark. How
easy it was to love then.
Now, love is a war
with no winners,
ammo without a gun,
a wall you wish you could
tear down. That’s right,
you say. I’m restrictive.
That’s my job.
He stomps away
and slams his bedroom door,
leaving you standing
alone with your horrible,
fierce love.
On Mother’s Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, mother, mother's day, parenting, poem, poetry on May 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »
She looks so happy with her new baby, all coo
and smile and jiggle and swing.
I smile at her, and think of everything
I do not tell her. How the child will grow up
to break her heart over and over. How
she will give him more love
than she knew she had, and it will not
be enough. How he will hate her
for holding a line. How she must hold it,
still. How she will come to doubt herself.
How all of us are broken, no
matter how hard we’ve worked to be
whole, and how none of us can
carry the other, no matter how
much we long to. How she will
beg her own heart, Stay open,
stay open. And how some wise friend
may someday say to her,
Shut down your big heart
at many a time. It needs to rest
while you are awake.
And she will know perhaps by then
the truth of love, how it is never
what we imagined. How
big a risk it is to love. How
everything depends on this. And how
she will weep, someday, watching
another young mother in the park,
cooing at her baby, remembering
how simple it seemed, and how
perhaps it is still that simple,
a mother, a child, a big world to explore.
Into the Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, dog, imagination, mother, pet, poem, poetry on May 7, 2018| 3 Comments »
My daughter walks up the drive to meet me.
Mom, she says, I have a pet.
She is dragging an old pump
attached to a long black electrical cord.
Meet Pumpy, she says.
Hello Pumpy, I say. She pulls
the red and black cylinder into her arms.
I am trying to prove to you
that I am ready to be a dog owner, Mom.
I am going to take Pumpy for walks
every night and every morning
and give him a bath in the river. Come.
She puts the pump back on the ground
and yanks it up the drive, calling,
Come boy. Good Pumpy.
When we get to the top of the drive,
she picks up Pumpy to cross the street.
You know, she says, the street
is a dangerous place.
And then we walk up the dirt hillside.
There, she finds an old deer bone
and helps Pumpy to bury it.
Mom, she says, what do you think?
I think my heart is breaking
with the purity of her desire.
I think the evening light
makes everything more beautiful.
I think it is hard to say no
to something our loves really want.
No, I say. We can’t get a dog.
But you will be a great dog owner someday.
She knew this would be the answer,
and says, Come, Pumpy,
there’s more to explore.
And though it’s getting dark,
we walk deeper into the woods.
Cutting Through
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, nature, poem, poetry, secret on April 2, 2018| 2 Comments »
Come, she says, let me show you
my secret place in the woods,
and she grabs my hand
and walks me past the pond through
the forest and along a ditch
until we arrive in a small clearing
rung with birch and old spruce.
It’s secret, she says, but not
too far away. Will you help me
get it ready? We return with
loppers and a small hand saw
and clear away what is dead. The sun
discovers new ways to touch the ground.
When we leave, the clearing
comes with us. All day, I feel it,
the light as it finds its way in.
One Enormous Gratitude
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, gratitude, mother, poem, poetry, reframe, ritual on March 30, 2018| 4 Comments »
my mother began my mornings
by singing to me “it’s going to be
such a lovely day”—
over thirty years later
I still believe her
Just After the Equinox
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, the moment, trees on March 26, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Out the kitchen window, my daughter
scales the cottonwood tree, winds
her way up the inner branches.
Feeling my eyes, she turns to smile at me,
her gaze entered by light.
The tree is bare, the buds in gray hoods,
though soon there will be a riot of quivering green.
So much in us still waits to arrive,
though in moments such as this,
there are no other moments, only this one
fluttering wild in our breast, not even trying
to balance the emptiness, with our hearts so full.
Sign up for my daily poem!
Archives
Meta
