Nest

photo from wikicommons

When I get home from school

Grandpa’s van is parked in the driveway

So it is an extra good day

He is waiting inside with money

For my good report card

And mom says she is making spaghetti

For dinner my favorite she says

There is time to roller skate before

I have to set the table

So I lace up my new skates the ones

With the wheels made of polyurethane

Not metal like I used to have when

I was little I am wearing my

Favorite blue dress that

Floats around my legs

And it is before I have learned to

Worry about how I look when I move

So I am just fast and free and when

A gap in the sidewalk

Sends me crashing and tears the skin

Off my knee my daddy comes running

Down the driveway and scoops me up

I sob into his shoulder because it hurts

But also I am happy because I thought

That maybe I was too big for him

To do this but I am not and

To make me feel better Timmy

Offers to let me play with his

Sizzler race track and be whatever

Color car I want

During dinner my salad with

Thousand island dressing

Feels crunchy and sweet in my mouth

As Grandpa tells the story

About when he played football

For St. Cecelia’s and a boy on the

Other team had a full red beard

And after dinner my mom lets me

Put baby Kevin in his pajamas and he kicks

His chubby legs and looks so happy

That I think when I am grown up

I want to be a mommy

And feed my kids spaghetti

And make every night

Just like

This

Enough

Celebrating Mother's Day and the upcoming Listen to Your Mother show by re-posting some of my motherhood-themed poems this week...

My sixteen-year-old boy arrived at the hospital at 6:30
that Saturday morning to sit with me.
He sat between the window and my bed, his long fingers
curled around my own IV-taped hand.
And he was beautiful,
his lanky body bent over my bed, partially
shadowed by the window-framed sun.

He had gotten up so early just so he could sit with me
before his track and field meeting at school,
but I couldn’t move my morphine-heavy
eyes and lips to talk to him.
It seemed like I should say so much,
but I could only manage a few I-love-yous and
you-don’t-have-to-stays. But he did.

I kept drifting out and tripping up in my own
bad dreams and staples and tubes. I couldn’t
quite hold myself there with him. I kept wandering,
two nights back, to my mumbling pre-surgery prayers.
And I realized I could have done better.
Instead of my weak now-and-at-the-hour-of-our-deaths
and acts of contrition, I should have just said,

Look Lord, Here Lord, I made this boy.
And that would have been enough.

Waters

Celebrating Mother's Day and the upcoming Listen to Your Mother show by re-posting some of my motherhood-themed poems this week...

I wanted to say
When I saw
Your blue eyes brim
That the waters
That flood so fast
And rush past your lashes
Are the same ones
That spill from mine
That they come
From the same stream
Of love and regret
Of grasp and release
Of swell and stab
Are the same tides
Of contracting and pushing
Of me and other
That clean
And then roil
The bonds
Between child
And mother

Jack

From the beginning

your hands moved with the instinct

of the second born son,

first banging on me from the inside,

so I wouldn't forget you were coming.

Then reaching out in welcome,

like happy baseball mitts, clapping.

Or balled up into fists,

pushing hard against me,

while simultaneously

insisting,

on sleeping right beside me.

Your hands took no prisoners,

even in peekaboo,

but always pointed just in time

to the full blue pools of your eyes,

or the perfect curve of your dimples--

smart hands!

And they felt so right

resting in mine,

but too often I had to drag them from behind--

the plight of the second child:

never enough sleep,

never enough time.

But now your grown hands strum your guitar,

and I can't remember the last time

your hands reached

for me.

But I want you to know

that you have always had me

head over heels,

out of my mind

in love.

My hands

will always miss yours

wanting mine.

For Colleen

On the day we met,

I was struck by two things:

how your face opened up

like a book of kindness

and how completely in tune you were

with your own body.

You were confidence in motion.

I was in awe.

And my brother was in love.

And each day since then,

you have been

the sister of my heart,

a gift to my family.

Time and again,

I have seen

how you harness seamless energy

of mind, body, spirit:

on the basketball court,

on the dance floor,

Even in the throes of labor,

when you reached down

and delivered your own son

from your own body--

one of the most beautiful things

I have ever seen.

And so it seemed impossible

that the words breast cancer

belonged anywhere near your name.

A cruel incongruity.

A ridiculous mistake.

And I wouldn't have blamed you

if you had slammed that beautiful,

open, kind face

shut for a while.

But you didn't.

You wrote your story for all to read.

And you triumphed--

through surgery and radiation and fatigue

and teaching and mothering.

You came out cancer free!

And I just wanted to tell you

how grateful I am,

and how beautiful you are,

and how much I love you.

My sister,

my hero,

my friend.

Water

I wanted to say
When I saw
Your blue eyes brim
That the waters
That flood so fast
And rush past your lashes
Are the same ones
That spill from mine
That they come
From the same stream
Of love and regret
Of grasp and release
Of swell and stab
Are the same tides
Of contracting and pushing
Of me and other
That clean
And then roil
The bonds
Between child
And mother

I'm back after a bit of a dry spell with a poem somewhat inspired by this week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry.

Enough

My sixteen-year-old boy arrived at the hospital at 6:30
that Saturday morning to sit with me.
He sat between the window and my bed, long fingers
curled around my own IV-taped hand.
And he was beautiful,
his lanky body, bent over my bed, partially
shadowed by the window-framed sun.

He had gotten up so early so he could just sit there
before his track and field meeting at school,
but I couldn’t move my morphine-heavy
eyes and lips to talk to him.
It seemed like I should say so much,
but I could only manage a few I-love-yous and
you-don’t-have-to-stays. But he did.

I kept drifting out and tripping up in my own
bad dreams and staples and tubes. I couldn’t
quite hold myself there with him. I kept wandering,
two nights back, to my mumbling pre-surgery prayers.
And I realized I could have done better.
Instead of my weak now-and-at-the-hour-of-our-deaths
and acts of contritions, I should have just said,

Look Lord, Here Lord, I made this boy.
And that would have been enough.

This week's prompt from Big Tent Poetry asked us to create a conversation poem. I kept thinking of a conversation I couldn't have, and came up with this.

Silly Rhyme for Rick on Father's Day

Thank you for joining
your Ys to my Xes and
making me mother
to the more boysterous
of the sexes

Why I Love my Mom

She’s the one who loves
to watch my forty-one-year-
old freckled face sleep

On the mound

On the mound my son
Is a study in impossible pre-pubescent grace
On the mound my son
Is liquid motion
Is preternatural poise
Is singular purpose
On the mound my son
Is focus and balance
Is velocity and trajectory
On the mound my son
Is a kinetic stoic
Is arm and leg and ball and glove
Is a perfect arrangement of parts
On the mound my son
Is science and poetry
Is divergence and symmetry
On the mound my son
Is beautiful
On the mound my son
Belongs to no one
On the mound my son
Is completely mine and separate from me
On the mound my son
Is himself

Today's NaPoWriMo prompt #20 asked us to write about a hero. This week, my hero is Brendan.

Lasagna

I must admit I'm pressed for time today. I just spent a lovely evening celebrating Rick's birthday with friends and lasagna. I'm full and sleepy, and just for this evening, am resorting to a little Haiku.

Homemade lasagna
Makes me happy and I think
Made them happy, too.

The Un-Zen Art of Mothering Tulips

I should have a more Zen-like attitude
toward tulips.
But I can’t.
My attachment is too great.
I spend the last trimester of winter
wanting
and filled with fear
that this will be the year
that they don’t come.

And when they arrive
I waste our time.
I know too much
from past experience
with baby toes
and baby fingers
and baby feet
that such pink softness,
such perfect curves
and folds
are much too sweet.

The heartbreak
is that they seem
to stay still
and rest themselves against
my grateful breast.
Happy, so it seems, to be at rest.
But no matter how tight
I swaddle,
they stretch out,
open up,
scatter their petals
to the worldly ground.

So I would like to say
my time with them is
spent in the now.
But it isn’t.
A mother’s love is all about
attachment.
And I haven’t found
the will
to release
the wanting
yet.

This is for NaPoWriMo Prompt#4.

Thirty years

Sometimes being nine was hard
But when I saw your beige van—
My chariot—in our driveway
Nine was right where I wanted to be
And everything about you
Was just right:
Your white shoes
Your white belt
Your Old Spice
Your pink shirt
Your Frank Sinatra eight tracks

But most of all
It was your way of announcing
My entrance:
“This is my granddaughter”
With an implied
With whom I am well pleased
And your way of proclaiming,
Affirming my desires:
“Give her whatever she wants”
She deserves whatever she wants

You were the one
Who thought I was perfect
And deserved donuts for dinner
And to stay up past Johnny Carson
And to dip my French fries
In whatever I wanted
“You’re Number One,”
You would whisper
“No one else is.
No one else could be.”
It was just you and just me.

A few years ago
Thirty-nine was really, really hard
And I mourned the possibility
Of your van in my driveway
And felt deeply, truly sorry
For myself
But then I ruined the moment
By looking at your picture
And then looking in the mirror
And seeing the lines of holy obligation
Running over your face
And then mine
“This is my granddaughter,”
You whispered.
Now get up off the floor and start acting like it.

This was in response to readwritepoem's prompt #117.

A little haiku about the hubby's latest creation...

Sculpting the Metal's Edge

el pez

the old year flames out

and collides with our hunger

for a brand new start

(A haiku inspired by the burning fish Rick made for the annual Mayfield New Year's Eve party)

Just a bit more bragging about the hubby...

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/dec/31/steel-panther-embodies-mead-highs-community/

Purring with pride...the panther is complete!

My husband's panther sculpture is complete and is now installed at Mead High School. Check it out!

Rick Davis Sculpture: Panther Project

Happy Birthday, Mom

I’ve known I wanted to be
A mommy
Since before I was three
And it’s because of you.

I wanted to be for my dolls—
And later my boys—
What you were for me.

And I thank you
For putting so much
Of yourself
Into me
And for making it look easy.

But most of all
I thank you
For letting
My late-thirties me
Fall apart
In your arms
Over the phone

And for refusing to allow
Me to measure myself
Against the mommy
I thought you were
When I was three

And insisting I see myself
The way you say
You have always, always
Seen me: as a miracle
And to love
Myself at least that much

Because that’s how mommies love.
And that’s how mommies see.

Purring with pride in my sculptor husband...

Check out the progress Rick's making on the Mead High School panther!
http://davismetalsculpture.blogspot.com/2009/09/mead-panther-progress.html

Keith and Peggy August 26, 1967

I am the daughter
of a father and mother
who’ve loved each other

for forty-two years
a love that created me
but is not contained

by their parental
duties My brothers and I
have long left the house

they tended for us
but the two of them always
have been home for one

another, best friends
and lovers, as it was since
before the children

is now and ever
shall be, while their kids smile, give
thanks and say Amen.