it may have taken two years
of counting and miscounting
of piling up paperwork
and learning to manage
twenty five-then-six-now-seven-year-olds,
of arguing parents
and camping trip disasters
and never forgetting how to forget,
but here i am,
Girl Scout troop leader,
just for a moment feeling like
I’ve got this down,
I can do this,
I can count and organize,
I can be just what I need to be
in the eyes of
my daughters
their daughters
the daughters of the world
(or world, the one we want to give them).
Month: October 2010
Autumnal Arrival
fall arrived with yesterday’s wind
just as i said a storm was coming.
rain pelts the windows,
startles the sidewalks.
absent for months,
when summer needed its moisture,
it mocks the golden-red leaves
and glistens the world with
the season that they have
ached for, begged for, for months.
i miss yesterday
when the sun still streaked
across the plains
and shorts were still acceptable.
and the girls? they spent
every afternoon, evening, night
relishing in the warmth
of a gluttonous season.
but here it is
a reminder of what we want
(to have or to let go of)
and it is here to stay
(autumn? here to stay?)
change is here to stay.
Wind (Personified)
the wind tries to
dominate our day
but we pedal anyway
the wind beats up
giant clouds of dust
(to the pumpkin fest or bust)
the wind reaches out
to grab them from the air
but pumpkin launchers couldn’t care
the wind helps us
with a tailwind home
kicking up leaves wherever we roam.
Pie
how strange it is to hear them
in the back seat of our car,
though they belong to us.
wasn’t it only a moment ago
that he and i drove down this road
and stopped at Village Inn for pie,
a Friday night with nowhere to go,
nothing to do, no responsibilities?
they chirp their wonderings like baby birds,
but they are no longer babies
as they sing in Spanish the
possibilities of what color
Doctor Dino, the preschool
take-home toy, will be next year, as he
has changed from blue to red to green
in the hands of oldest, middle, youngest.
Denver, too, has changed since i first,
at age eleven, took a bus across town
with my friend, eating lunch in
the Tabor Center and pretending to shop.
now the light rail has taken us here,
to a Convention Center that didn’t exist
amongst fancy four-star hotels built up
like mocking gods in the face of recession.
he and i, we are not the same either.
there will be no stop at Village Inn,
no pie. instead we listen:
“Va ser… ¡rojo! ¡rosario! ¡amarillo! ¡azul!”
and i think, we’ll never know the color.
our baby will be out of preschool, Doctor Dino
will be in some other little girl’s home,
and these streets? they’ll never stay the same.
Mole
you are a cancerous mole
on otherwise flawless skin
appearing from nowhere
but settling in with a vicious sting
as if you have always belonged.
perhaps you have been there
hiding beneath scabs and
thin strands of golden hair,
waiting in the depths of tissue
to release your venom.
now you haunt my fingers
as they try to dance across
the once-smooth place you’ve
chosen to poison. but i know
that you won’t be here long.
i swallow the thought of your release
with these pills of gratitude
that i have purchased without you knowing.
you may have sneaked into my life,
but your exit will be quick and painless.
Bird
just out of reach
you beseech
like flitting birds
you take my words.
i wish i could hold
my hand out bold
snatch you from the sky
take you by and by.
but here i’ll stay
forget our play
disappointment rests
on what you think’s best.
The Wall
how can i make you see
that with bricks stacked up
one by one in your way,
that with no bulldozer
or sledgehammer, you will
have to pull them down
one by one, tossing them
to the ground and climbing
over the remainder of the wall
that keeps you here?
i wish i could actually build it
and you could actually climb it
break it
take it with you
but i can’t. i can only offer
the parts you will need to
assemble your own hammer,
your own destructive machine.
and i can only hope that you will
take the time to put the parts
together and break through the wall.
Three Little Bears
Calling down the stairs
as if reciting their favorite tale,
our three little bears shout out,
their words falling one step after another,
“I have no pajamas in my drawer!”
“The pajamas in my drawer are too hot!”
“My pajama drawer is broken!”
And despite the crying over silly bands,
the arguing over vegetables,
the quarreling over favorite plates,
we have a good laugh
and remember, remember
why we are parents.
War Paint
it started with innocence
plastered on little girls’ faces
like war paint,
pink, blue, ready for battle.
after a long drive,
a stop at the store,
and a mile up the mountain,
after sifting through
golden remnants of fall
and finding treasures
in sticks, under rocks,
the war paint began to smear.
dripping down into the vessels
of their wrinkle-less cheeks,
the pink, the blue, the blood
awakened them to a new reality.
(i want to take my brush,
soft as silk on their skin,
dip it back into the bucket
and paint them, my young,
until they are blinded from
the horrors of everyday war)
but it is too late. for it
dripped and seeped and slithered
into their eyesmouthporeshearts
as they sat awestruck in
the back seat my (motherly) hands
pushed them into.
as their lips wrapped themselves
around their Sausalito saltwater taffy
(blue and pink, like war paint,
a gift brought home, home)
they took in the scene, faces
in the window, knees on the seat,
all innocence wiped away.
shattered glass. hushed crowd.
distant (gapingly absent) sirens.
blue and red blinking lights.
knees on the pavement.
blood on the pavement.
bodies on the pavement.
it ended with…
a long drive,
a stop at the store,
and sticky faces and hands,
war paint, pink, blue,
faded from their first battle.
Spider
how venomous are you
with your crab-shell back,
your daintily long tan legs,
and your sparkling beauty
of a fly-trapping web,
waiting here for our
(lost search) discovery?
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