When grandchildren come to visit
shade wide, grass overgrown,
we make oatmeal pancakes and hot chocolate.
They run run run
play
low basketball goal
basketball
throw balls at each other.
Sometimes one cries
the other says I’m sorry
after her father insists.
Bors hunting for Daed and Gareth
Don’t we miss a missing thing? Keen, lack
–a sparrow pecking salt into one’s wary eye.
I have grown tired of sewing my fingers tired
(my big body shrugs into its winding shroud).
I’ve missed so many versions of myself
They bury the dead at sea
stitched in their hammock
cradling a cannonball
the final thread
through their nose
It’s the best stories
told often that stick
the one about the old lady
in the corner store
begging for crackers
Cracker?
You look like a cracker!
and the hairlipped boy
who came over the ridge
yelling, the war is oder, it’s oder!
About the shiftless
And indolent
And lazy
And feckless
Going down and down and down
deep in the chamber of contempt.
The Vitruvian Man? It must come down.
She writes of balconies
in Bulgaria, touching
the nose of a horse
in a film about a new country
where she dons
a Superman T-shirt
wielding pen
as warrior/worrier
mother to den
of poets who gather
when she beckons/calls
to arms voices
who holler injustice
and seek peace/place
uniting unlikely
fellows intent
to lean forward
to understand accents
Perhaps he attends
preschool, but the first departure
occurs at the entrance
to kindergarten. You will
most assuredly cry,
but your child may or may not.
One child, perhaps,
will complete the entire year
selectively mute.
A great weight will fall
when he speaks
at orientation to first grade.
The second departure
occurs at the
entrance to college.
Again you will cry.
In fact, you will
cry each August until
he graduates.
Then will come a job
out-of-town or a marriage.
At this point,
you will be beyond tears.
Your OB-GYN will inform
you that your goal
is to raise children who don’t need you.
You will agree.
Still, your body will deny this.
Scream the lyrics
out the car window
let me roll it down for you
way back when.
I want to show you a differnet kind of fun.
six pre-teen girls cramped into a five-passenger
shouting Taylor Swift at the top of our lungs.
We got looks from the other cars
but we didn’t care.
When I was ten
and thought I was the shit
I’d sing Imagine Dragons in the backseat
humming along not-so-softly to the radio.
The night I caught feelings for the first time
I screamed Bohemian Rhapsody in the dark.
Or is this just fantasy?
Call me cringe
Call me crazy
I thought I was in love.
Fourteen feels so far
yet at the same time it was yesterday
Conan Gray’s new single
I’d already listened to it 10 times
jamming in the Sam’s Club parking lot.
Walking up the hill, your arm holding me so close my steps were buoyant as we walk toward the future.
Sun and breeze over rough stalks we stop.
I hear your mind creating the vision.
Road base and curb appeal
A barn and a quilt square
A barn!!
Culverts through creek, new corners and fence, we find a hidden place to set a dream for growing corn.
The road home will hug the curve of the land like your hand on my hip
And at the end, I will find you.
