with the house half packed
my morning commute haunts me
no more sunrise walks
truth
Leaves
stomach tumbling
with sick realization:
innocence now lost
just three days ago
she was climbing up the limbs
of youth’s bulging tree
her arms strong and thin
(but what was bulging inside,
ready to burst free?)
to know that she knows
kills me from the inside out
(as a mom, a slave)
failures drop like leaves
of youth’s impending autumn
to crunch with my woes
i’ve always loved leaves
(but there’s no satisfaction
in this kind of crunch.)
she searches hollows
to fill a hollow within
(i’ve searched too. in vain.)
to know that she knows
brings every dark doubt to light
(no tree-limbed safe-net)
what will she climb next?
(the strong arms of a stranger
who will leave no leaves…)
a mom’s greatest fear:
to lose children to branches
that i cannot reach
Denver ReCycled
through cycling
in and out of neighborhoods
brick by brick, i fell
love lost, and then won
bungalow to bungalow
my city wooed me
the wheels spun me back
(sold my heart to Cheesman Park)
from bad-boy breakups
all along back streets
Park Hill, Cole, Cory Merrill
like love at first spin
bikes are trendy now
(they’ll dress like freaks to prove it)
but my bike love lives
in this uphill ride
with mountain sunset backdrop
my girls guiding me
i see them falling–
street by street, scraped knees and all–
in love with my love
Cross Country
weekend leftovers
murmur an early Monday
in my groaning gut
technology blues
plague two classes, one meeting
forced into nonsense
data collection
begins my singular plan
till phone rings: sick kid
frazzled packing up
for a stomach flu faker
then two extra kids
but that is not all!
cross country registration
at the last moment
my middle girl runs!
two days a week, a new plan:
laps around the park
(he can cook dinner–
we’ll eat late like back in Spain,
shed this U.S. stress)
and i will run too–
take tree-lined tech-free views home
(run free, not ragged)
Anywhere but Here
with windows wide: write.
because you’ve missed my poems, love.
since yesterday’s dawn
girls in sun’s shadow
as she announces her move.
life: cycle in, out.
you know you’ve missed me
my “seven-likes” followers
’cause i didn’t write
you count me daily
amongst the regular loves
that make us a life
and i was just born.
(it was like i was just born
the day i met him)
’cause seventeen years
can’t be measured in mountains
or wildflowers
or whining children.
but in the steps we oft take
on our way back home
and in sunsets. Sun!
lighting my way across love
across city, life.
cutting down this ‘hood
into what it’s meant to be:
scraped, demolished, lost.
circular i am
because that’s how tires spin:
neverending globe
that brings us back home
wherever that home may be.
anywhere but here.
If the Shoe Fits…
reality hits:
plumber, groceries, shoe shopping,
clean car, room, laundry
not a moment’s rest
to really run a household
two incomes looms big
will it be worth it?
one week i’ll be back at work
he’ll have long hours
what i did today?
dispersed between homework, school,
kids’ activities
never the down time
he’s given us all these years
(but… we can buy shoes!)
Stolen
she mentioned poem theft
when i went to Toronto
and i laughed and laughed
would someone steal poems
so specific to my life
day after day… kids??
would they steal this pic
formulated by daughters’
view of this bright world?
would they steal these plates
drying when hot water broke
no plumber can come?
would they steal our ride
our dip in the river, creek?
and claim it’s their poem?
would they fix plumbing?
be my man–wire phone lines?
they couldn’t be me
my poems, words, are mine
trapped here for worldwide view
no one would steal them
Nino’s Antiques
home: car cleaning bribe
so i can get my work done
and they earn their game
insurance battle
because i won’t be bullied
by corporations
i wash out bottles
and my new/old egg beater
from Nino’s Antiques
(the shop in Gorham
i went to as a child
with just two pennies
and Nino emerged
with his wax-curled mustache
and sold me his goods
and this egg beater
will remind me: he’s still there
in my timeless town
his mustache now gray
asking my girls about school
his PBS on
selling his antiques
for much too little money
and chatting with kids
he’s no CEO
no insurance scam artist
my hometown hero)
Day Thirteen, Road Trip 2015
a moment of risk
on this never ending trip
is what makes this pic
kids brimming with grins
now i sit in silent car
grateful for this time
i watch my uncle
hands in tremors–sixty-five
granddaughter in tow
age recycles us
into all we wanted here–
just a yes, a yes
Because Riona Would.
All three of my children were born in the evening. If you are a mother, you can acknowledge the significance of this. They were twenty-one months apart, so when I had my third, my oldest was just three and a half.
The first two spent their first night in and out of my arms, crying because of a reaction to the pain medication I’d taken during labor or because she was THAT starving.
But Riona?
I barely heard a sound from her… for EVER.
She lay next to me in the bed for all of that first night. She murmured a little, nursed a little, and settled back into sleep, happy to be near me.
And so it began. The ending of my motherhood with the child who came into the world as peaceful as a lamb.
And that is why I am crying now. Because you didn’t take a moment to see her. To listen to her soft calls, to her murmurs in the night. Because you thought an eight-almost-nine-year-old’s protests meant nothing.
What you. DON’T UNDERSTAND. Is that SHE never protests. She gives in. She listens to her older sisters’ whims and plays along, whether she really wants to or not. She fits into the jealous eye of her eldest sister, who often teases her because “no one can ever be as nice as Riona.” She is just like her father, same birth sign and all: born with a pure heart, giving, generous, willing to sacrifice all for the love of those around her.
Riona is the one who, back in March, cried herself to sleep because I told her we couldn’t afford camp this year. Riona is the reason I have sacrificed four weeks of my summer for summer school and home visits and Spanish class, all in the futile hope that I could pay for that one week of camp for all three girls.
So. NO. I do NOT want to hear that you “lost” her paperwork, sent in the SAME envelope as my other two daughters. I don’t want to come back from 50 hours of class in 5 days to hear that my youngest daughter was told she was leaving on Tuesday, was not allowed to participate in any camp activities because of this even though she ADAMANTLY TOLD YOU SHE WAS LEAVING ON FRIDAY AND YOU NEVER CALLED US TO CHECK, was told her camp store account was EMPTY WHEN SHE HAD $16 DOLLARS LEFT AND COULD HAVE BOUGH CHAPSTICK FOR HER DRIED LIPS, or that she was just… some other eight-year-old.
Because she’s not. If you could see her, really see her, for the gentle soul that she is, you would understand why I can’t stop crying. You would understand why I have given up half of my summer for my daughters to have the experience that you have now stripped from her. You would understand that a protest from a small voice should be THE LOUDEST PROTEST YOU HAVE EVER HEARD.
But you are not a mother. You are eighteen years old and have yet to learn the reality of this kind of pain.
And that is why I forgive you. Because Riona would.
Step Write Up 