the boy who fit in my lap
now taller than I—
an oak from a geranium seed
Posts Tagged ‘parenting’
One Wonder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged mothering, parenting, poem, poetry, son on January 10, 2018| 2 Comments »
A Poem Not Really About Gardening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, poem, poetry, potatoes on October 22, 2017| 2 Comments »
Just today, in the garden,
I found dozens of dark blue
McHugh Blue potatoes,
hard and small, their
delicious fists hiding
in the cool soil.
How wonderful the world is
if you just dig a little.
All those things you planted,
they show up, even though
everything around them
looks dead.
Don’t be in a hurry,
the woman said,
and I realized
I was wishing away
these difficult days.
Imagine how patient
the ground.
Annual Check Up
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged children, parenting, poem, poetry on October 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »
The doctor checks their pulses,
their ears, their throats,
knee reflexes and weight
and dubs them healthy,
gives them high fives
without mentioning
(did he not notice?)
that they have wings.
One Almost 5’10
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growth, parenting, poem, poetry on October 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »
the tree I planted
now taller than I—
my empty hand
still remembering
the weight of the acorn
After Waking to Terrible News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindness, parenting, poem, poetry on October 2, 2017| 2 Comments »
the wind tugs the leaves
off the aspen trees, many
before they’re golden—
children, I say, I love you,
and kiss their green ears
their green heads as I send
them to school,
tell them to go
do beautiful things
In Knots
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged knots, letting go, monkey fist, parenting, poem, poetry on September 24, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I’ve spent years learning to tie the monkey’s fist,
wrapping the long working end of the rope
around the fingers of my hand. While rocking
and nursing and feeding and soothing, I’ve held
the first set of turns in place, then made three more turns
with the rope. While reading and chasing and
swinging and catching, I’ve learned to pass the end
through the inside of the knot, to make turns inside
other turns. And pull it all tight, just so.
I have wanted to perfect this heaving line knot,
something I might use to throw to my son
to save him when he drifts away.
I have practiced the art of the throw, but it seems
I have tied my own hands by accident.
And now that it’s time to untether the line,
my hands want only to practice what they know,
holding on, holding on, holding on,
how clumsy this new art, letting go.
When You Are Far Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, night, parenting, poem, poetry on August 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »
The night is enormous—
big enough to hold us both
in a way that make us
seem close.
This is why I speak to you
through the stars—
not because I think
that they can hear,
but because I pray
you can.
Even Though It Seems Impossible
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged love, parenting, poem, poetry, surrender on August 7, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I tell myself this is how love begins,
with a grumble. A rock in the shoe.
The flowers dead. Sleet.
This is how love begins, with taunting.
With mud on its feet. It begins
when we can’t imagine loving.
It begins when there is no light.
This is how love begins. When
we’re too exhausted to fight,
and as we slump, a door appears,
and we can’t imagine not
walking through it.
Lots of Honey
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bedtime, owl and the pussycat, parenting, poem, poetry on February 27, 2017| 7 Comments »
Before she sleeps, my daughter and I
face each other on her pillow,
our heads heavy, our eyes half mast,
and in the dim light we recite
“The Owl and the Pussycat”—
the words seem to leap between
our breaths so that we can’t tell
where each other’s voice ends or starts,
and I think of the pericardium
around the heart, which the Chinese say
is a boundary place that decides
who gets in and who stays out,
and I marvel at how, for now,
on this quiet night, our hearts
seem to need not any space apart,
and after the owl and the pussycat
dance to the light of the moon, the moon,
we curl into each other’s curves
like two parentheses
on the same side of a thought,
like twin silver runsible spoons.
Next Chapter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, books, parenting, poem, poetry, understanding on February 21, 2017| 4 Comments »
Mom, she says, Stop crying.
She’s embarrassed for me.
I can’t stop. After three hours
of snuggling on the green couch,
we are nearing the end of our book,
where the silverback gorilla
and the baby elephant say goodbye
to the girl who has helped them
leave their cages. It is not
the farewell that makes me weep,
though that, too, but the way
that the girl and the gorilla
share a passion for art. It’s so good,
I say to my girl between sniffs,
it’s so rare and so good to find someone
who really understands you.
She looks at me as if she will never
comprehend how such a thing
could make someone cry.
My tears land on the end of the chapter,
leaving a wet trail I don’t
expect her to follow, not yet,
her small hand already
pushing on mine to turn the page.
In Room 224
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aloneness, parenting, poem, poetry on February 19, 2017| 2 Comments »
My daughter is still asleep
after stealing the sheets
all night. I finally let her
have them all and I’ve risen
to watch the snow not fall
outside the window.
It is gray, and from where
I sit on the floor, I’m not sure
if it’s gray because it’s too early
for sun or because it’s cloudy.
I don’t want to move
or make a sound—
would rather not wake
my daughter. They are rare,
these moments alone.
A truck rattles by outside.
I notice I am noticing the truck.
That’s a lot of noticing
for something so insignificant,
I think to myself,
then I’m startled by a laugh,
a full belly laugh, in the bed
beside me. My daughter, dreaming,
can’t stop giggling.
God, I think, it’s great
to have a body,
and on this cold, gray morning,
gratitude finds me and
body slams me
with my wild luck,
pins me with joy
to be this very woman
on the floor in room 224
not at all alone.
My Son Teaches Me to Draw Aspen Trees
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, mistakes, parenting, poem, poetry on February 12, 2017| 1 Comment »
I like the way he leans over the paper,
the way he pulls the black ink
across the page, the matter-of-fact way
he says, “Like this, Mom,
only you don’t have to be afraid
to make mistakes. They usually turn out.”
I want to tell him
his life is like these trees—
that no matter how much
he thinks he’s messed up,
there is no blotch or line
that cannot be transformed
into an opportunity.
Instead, I say, “Show me
what to do next,”
and he shows me how
to shade the sides
with small quick strokes,
the dark lines holding
so much light.
Five Cents
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, generosity, parenting, poem, poetry, warmth on February 4, 2017| 2 Comments »
Finding by chance a buffalo nickel
my son decides to spend his fortune
on a girl he’s never met
who woke one morning
with cancer in her marrow—
he tells me he’s thinking
a lot about death,
and he’s scared,
and I tell him yes,
it’s scary.
Later, I look out the window,
and though there’s not a hint
of leaves on the trees outside,
I feel some certainty
about green and summer,
and I’m amazed at how
just when we think the world
could not get any colder,
we are reminded what even
a tiny bit of warmth can do.
Lost in Motherland …
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, poetry workshop, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer on January 23, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Western Slope Moms! Join me for a writing class this Saturday, 9-1, in Ridgway–no experience except mothering necessary. Read all about it and register here: Lost in Motherland: Writing to Discover Who We Are(n’t)
At the Candlelight Vigil
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, peace, poem, poetry on January 21, 2017| 3 Comments »
Mommy, she says,
her face still warm in candlelight,
why did you start to cry—
and I hear not just curiosity
but the itchy vest of embarrassment.
I don’t tell her
the math of the world
is just too sad,
perhaps I cry more
because for a moment I believe
the words I tell her—
it’s going to be okay.
How It Transforms
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, parenting, poem, poetry on January 8, 2017| 1 Comment »
a pinch of cumin,
a pinch of salt, the scent
of lemon and ginger—
tell me, what else I should have done
with my anger
Why
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, poem, poetry, singing on January 7, 2017| 6 Comments »
There are yet words that come near the unsayable,
and, from crumbling stones, a new music
to make a sacred dwelling in a place we cannot own.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two X
Before bed, my daughter asks me
why in school they learn to sing,
I mean, she says, it’s not like that’s
what we’ll do when we grow up.
And part of me longs to answer her
with stories of my own—
how the stone of our losses dissolves
into tune, how we become wave,
become surge, blur with tone,
how song opens up every door
we might close, how it holds us
when nothing and no one else will.
Instead, I tuck the question
under her pillow as she climbs in bed,
hope it finds the trapdoor into her sleep,
hope the unsayable answer will weave itself
into her dreams like a river,
like light in a forest, like a breeze
in July, like a song that finds the lips
again and again and each time makes them new.
One Blink
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parenting, poem, poetry, time on January 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »
distracted by dishes
and shoveling and paperwork
I fail to notice
my son
has grown two inches
In the Letter My Friend Says
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged healing, ordinary life, parenting, poem, poetry on December 26, 2016| 4 Comments »
her daughter has a tumor behind her knee.
Already it’s grown into the bone.
Very aggressive, the doctor says,
and though he names the diagnosis,
he tells my friend not to Google it.
Sometimes what we know
creates more footholds for fear. There’ll be surgery,
the doctor says, and chemo.
I want to give her a brush tonight, nothing special,
one she could pull through her own long hair
and then through her daughter’s dark curls, as well.
How commonplace to brush and comb,
to unsnarl the tangles and make one’s hair
smooth again. I want to give her the terrible gift
of the habitual life—the tedious days in which we
brush and wash and dress and sleep and work
and laugh and shit and yell and fuss and forget
how fragile we are, forget how temporary
these bodies can be, forget how bloody lucky
we are every minute to be alive.
Oh Night Divine
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, creche, family, parenting, poem, poetry on December 26, 2016| Leave a Comment »
In the crèche arranged on the piano each Christmas,
the clay face of the virgin mother is eternally beaming
at the miracle child in his swaddling clothes,
and the miracle child is sleeping, always peacefully sleeping,
no matter how loudly my son pretends he’s a race car, no matter
how many people are laughing in the kitchen.
And Joseph, he is looking out across the piano
as if staring through the stable, staring through centuries,
perhaps, as if he can already see the tables upended
in the temple, can already smell the sweetness
of shared loaves and the pungency of fish, can hear
Mary weeping, or is it me he hears, playing piano
and singing about the hopes and fears of all the years,
then pausing to ask my children not to argue, please,
and to use their kindest voices with each other—and they
continue to bicker. Meanwhile the shepherd and his sheep
gaze up at the crack in the wall in awe, as if there were stars there,
stars brightly shining, and yonder, breaking, a new and glorious morn.