Sixteen

Sixteen years ago today, I was giving birth and Jessie was entering the world, feet first and ready to run about the place sewing havoc and delight. I started writing mom poems when she was about a year old and I was just beginning to sleep more than ten minutes at a time. I could barely see straight, but I realized that her life was already speeding up (a year old! how could that be?!?) and I had better start scribbling down some thoughts about it.
The Call was my first poem about being a mom and reading it now is pretty interesting, with Jessie half way through high school, and already gone so much I have to schedule a birthday breakfast with her. In many great and varied ways, she's already my flown one. In a lot of comforting ways, she's still right here, sleeping in the next room, about to wake up sixteen.
For good measure, I have also included below "Approaching Eight," a poem that now neatly marks the halfway point of her life.
Happy birthday, fabulous girl!

The Call

The fall winds covered my bed with a sheet of leaves;

drought in much of the country, fires already.

I was dry in my skeleton, old bones

crackling in their sleep beneath the duck down,

dreams like teasing sheep’s wool through a dark hole.

I thought I was a member of ordinary time,

two Sundays after the Ascension, or was it the Assumption?

but then she was here, new under the sun;

she examined every leaf, one by one by one;

she rolled on the bed laughing, and I joined in.

Hail to her, and sunlight, and spirit songs.

She bends the back of the wind and lets it go

so it springs forward with a shower of bright stars.

I touch her tiny shoulder blades as a gentle reminder –

she’ll be my flown one; I will call after her

and my call will go higher and higher

till it’s just air and only dolphins hear it. 

Approaching Eight

For Jessie.

At first light

you get in your little boat,

it's tippy, and there's no-one on the shore,

nobody waving.

In a photo of a million faces

I could find your face.

My finger would be drawn to it,

even if I didn't look.

I never thought

eight would be so fragile,

so delicate, so robust, such a synthesis,

a symphony, a gallery full of

astonishing art. For my part,

now and then

I see where I held the brush.

So off you go in your wooden boat

with the warped oars and peeling paint.

I won't stand guard on the shore.

I won't even peek

from the top window of the house

as you punt inexpertly round the lagoon.

I will close the door of an inner room;

and when you come home

with a crab's leg you found for me,

still dripping, faintly clicking,

we'll have cinnamon toast

and tea.

You'll clamber on my knee

all elbows and long toes.

I might murmur,

Have fun on the water?

and you'll nod, not mentioning

how grown up it felt, how scary,

that moment when the oar

rode up, what a relief

to make it back to shore,

how tomorrow you want more.

And for a while

in the quiet ticking

of our allotted time,

we won't do anything

together, but you will sit

enchanted vigil with your life

and I with mine.