Friday, June 9, 2017

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








1 comment:

  1. How many ways can I say I LOVE THIS POEM?! But I do - both of these. So there you go. LOVE!

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