Friday, February 16, 2018

Happy Birthday Mom


I scribbled thanks to the universe in my notebook - a thanks
that your body and your house and your care were where 

I landed and continue to land.

I sit at your table and lie in your arms and I think, 
what a warm world this is, and what a world our world 
would be if every mother could be as generous in love 
as you. Wars would be resolved with pillow letter apologies. 
Everyone would be offered full mugs in the mornings and bottles 
and blankets in the evenings. There would be storytelling and laughing 
and long tangling discussions. It would be a safe, civil, friendly, trustworthy 
world because every person would know that at least they had their mother.


Thank you, Mom for your wild joy and your tenderness, your honesty, courage,
and vulnerability. Thank you for showing me what it is like to be human.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

MEDICINE

Blue elderberry syrup 
slides from measuring cup
to warm mug. I turn up
the bottle of wildflower honey
and squeeze a glassy stream,
while pockets of peppermint tea
soak, sink, bleed and steam,
my spoon spinning a gold green.


I beg my daughter to sit and open
her mouth and take her medicine.
She puts them in
then takes them out: three little pills
on a flat piece of porcelain,
an archipelago in a cloudy spit puddle,
I dry them with a cotton cloth napkin.
Please sit and take this medicine.

Fevers, coughs, pediatric doctors,
far too many lamplit sleepless hours,
that I imagine hiding us at this house
beside the dirt, hills, and woods
clean and cluttered and close
with mugs, music, walks and paper books:
maps of paths, of people, places
stories on pasteurized paper pages.

A Wise Friend

A wise friend is akin to a book of old wisdom.  A book of bone and soul and skin. A book that breathes and speaks and eats. A book with a so...