It goes so fast, they say,
and clearly they don’t mean
today, which moves at the speed
of tectonic plates, not today
when holding a child
means not holding
that child because
they refuse to be held.
Sometimes, being a mother
is to move at the rate
of fear, the rate
of betrayal, the rate
of loss. Today,
to be a mother
is be ancient
oceanic crust that creeps
at ten centimeters a year.
Someday, perhaps tomorrow,
love will again be meteor,
but today it’s intense heat
at the core. It’s the slow scrape
of two great plates,
something cool
waiting to be warmed.
Posts Tagged ‘mothering’
Global Slowing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged geology, love, mothering, parrenting, time on May 21, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Motherhood
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beaver, home, mothering, parenting, resilience on April 30, 2021| 1 Comment »
—with thanks to the wise Rebecca Mullen
Today, again, I praise the beaver
who spends her life building,
rebuilding, rebuilding
her lodge where her young will live.
With small sticks and big sticks
and tall solid trunks,
with logs and rocks and mud,
with her teeth she builds a home,
builds it on moving water.
Because rain, because snow,
because warm, because cold,
because flow, because flow, because flow,
her home is forever in need of repair.
And so on a day when a surprise storm
has flooded the stream
and washed much of my lodge away,
I honor the beaver,
stalwart, resilient, habitual.
I notice the longing to move to land,
then I gather new sticks of courage.
Stones of forgiveness.
Logs of compassion
and the deep sticky mud of love.
I wade to the middle
of the current.
I, like all the other mothers,
I build this home again.
Inviting Obama for Dinner
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dinner, kids, manners, mothering, obama, thanksgiving on November 28, 2020| 2 Comments »
I no longer remember much of etiquette
from reading White Gloves and Party Manners,
so when Obama doesn’t come to our house
for Thanksgiving dinner, I needn’t worry
that I’ve forgotten how to address a former president
in an informal setting. I do, however, remind my kids
that if Obama were sitting with us,
they would want to remember to put their napkins
in their laps. They do.
And you probably don’t want to lick the serving spoon,
I add, as it goes from the cranberry sauce
into an eager mouth. And we don’t talk about farting.
The whole time Obama isn’t eating mashed potatoes with us,
we wonder what he is eating with his family
and what they are talking about,
and if he might not just accept an invitation
to our home for dinner. If he did,
we agree we would refrain from using the knife
with the butter dish to butter our own bread.
And, uncertain how to address him,
we’d just ask him personally how he’d like be called.
I’d like to believe that Obama might actually show up.
He’d knock at the door in his elegant and humble way,
no fanfare, holding a side dish of roasted brussels sprouts,
and we’d listen as he told us what he’s up to these days.
As it is, it’s kinda fun when he doesn’t show up
and we act like ourselves. I eat my green beans
with my fingers—they taste better that way.
My daughter plays with the candlewax.
Sometimes, I lick my plate.
One for the Fencing Championship
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged competition, fencing, mothering, poem, poetry on March 15, 2018| Leave a Comment »
What Every Mother Knows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chores, love, mothering, poem, poetry on March 12, 2018| Leave a Comment »
And it’s scrub the floors
and wash and wring,
run to the store,
fix everything,
and wash and wring,
and straighten drawers
remember to bring
bags to the store,
clean anything,
then clean some more
fix everything—
it’s in our chores
that love finds wings.
One Wonder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mothering, parenting, poem, poetry, son on January 10, 2018| 2 Comments »
On the Morning of the Thirteen Year Old’s Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loving, mothering, poem, poetry, September 11 on September 11, 2017| 5 Comments »
This morning, like every morning,
his mother rises with her heart open.
Somehow, overnight, it has healed.
She is not like the paper doll
that, when wrinkled by callousness,
will not ever return to its former shape.
No, somehow the heart not only heals,
it grows bigger—some miracle she cannot
understand. She thinks back
to the day he was born, the day
the towers fell. As she went into labor,
she thought no, not today, no not today,
until some strange grace slipped into her
and spoke the new words,
of course today, of course today.
How beautifully, how forcefully
love insists on itself. How astonishing,
the daily miracle that leads us
again to each other.
Independence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, independence, mothering, poem, poetry, swimming, wave on August 1, 2016| 1 Comment »
The girl with her goggles on pouts when the waves end.
You didn’t stay with me, she says. She holds on to my arm,
as we bob in the clear blue water of the pool. You stay with me,
she says. All around us, the high sun of summer makes
everything gleam. We splash and bob until the bell sounds,
and a collective squeal erupts from the crowded pool.
I stay as I have been told. The waves begin, small at first,
and the girl hangs on. And then the man-made surf
thrashes at our bodies, tugs at our suits. I do not
remember her letting go. I remember watching her head
disappear beneath the wave and her smile as she
emerged on the other side before she dove into the next swell.
Foreign Tongues
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged language, mothering, poem, poetry on May 24, 2016| 7 Comments »
We sometimes slip into w-wanguage,
a tongue my son invented, though no longer speaks.
My daughter and I are the two sole speakers
and we often find ourselves saying
What wa wabulous way, or
Womma, wan wi wease wave wore wapples?
The rules are simple.
We break them anyway,
forgetting to w or tripping over
our own expectations of how a word should sound.
In the end, the desire to speak clearly
and to be understood always wins.
Other times we’ll speak in nonsense syllables,
long strings of babble bellowed or crooned.
We’ll wave our hands, as if there is something
really at stake—like the desire to be understood.
Perhaps this is why whatever syllables
she utters, I will eventually echo them back,
stroking her hair, looking her right in the eye,
letting her know for certain
I know exactly what she means.
From the Pod
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dolphin, help, mothering, poem, poetry on April 20, 2015| 3 Comments »
Did you know, she says,
that dolphins will help
an injured animal
reach the surface so it can breathe?
She is six, and she shares
this new knowledge with anyone
she meets—a teacher, a waitress,
a woman in the airport, a man
in line at the store.
Perhaps she is already
somehow aware
that every one of us
is in treacherous waters
in need of a little nudge
from beneath that guides us
to emerge.