You had to be there
Occasionally someone will ask
how it feels to be in a season of separation
from my children.
What I want to do is tell the story of my first,
who clung to me even without a heartbeat.
And how after the procedure,
I didn't demand to hold him
as I should have
because I was weak and shy
and somehow flushed with shame.
But that is dark,
and we like to think we aren't made
to walk in the dark.
So instead I try to render a metaphor
about how you pass by your herb garden
in the morning on the way to work
and, unless they are freshly watered
and the temperature is just so,
you don't smell the lavender and the sage.
You double check again
what you already know:
that the sun will hover over them
in the afternoon while you are away,
and that you have sprinkled in the worm castings
when they were due.
But if you really want to mother an herb,
you have to rub it between your rough fingers,
just enough that it releases fragrant oil
and not so much that it falls apart.
And you cook something nostalgically new,
or you hold it under her preschooler's nose
so she understands about soil and sun
and how you treasure the leaves
and her little nose and the moment
without words.
It's rare anyone knows what I mean.
You had to be there.
26 September 2019
Fragile
For a passing moment each morning,
I am riveted by how brazenly we walk through a life
as like to kill us as not:
breathing untreated air,
washing with particles of plastic,
falling in love with strangers,
going to school--
as if the fact that this fragile thread has yet to set us loose
is permission to write a God
who loves us just a little bit extra.
They say that now the children
are more intimate with doom than we imagine.
Their love languages are irony and empathy,
in equal measure,
which I have come to believe
is the most earnestly human
we can hope to be these days.
But maybe that's not doom after all.
Maybe it's the template.
You'll recall the 12-year-old Jesus
escaped his frantic parents for three days
to school the rabbis
with his riff on apocalypse.
This morning, I hurtled north at 80
behind a gently swaying semi,
daring to write this poem on the contrails above the sunrise,
when the words could at any point
have lifted me from my body,
the very one that steers itself through the landmine.
All the while, the strawberries at home send out runners,
and my children, miles away,
walk into homeroom,
just about half trusting.
Because they only have the one choice.
They only have the one world to love.
For a passing moment each morning,
I am riveted by how brazenly we walk through a life
as like to kill us as not:
breathing untreated air,
washing with particles of plastic,
falling in love with strangers,
going to school--
as if the fact that this fragile thread has yet to set us loose
is permission to write a God
who loves us just a little bit extra.
They say that now the children
are more intimate with doom than we imagine.
Their love languages are irony and empathy,
in equal measure,
which I have come to believe
is the most earnestly human
we can hope to be these days.
But maybe that's not doom after all.
Maybe it's the template.
You'll recall the 12-year-old Jesus
escaped his frantic parents for three days
to school the rabbis
with his riff on apocalypse.
This morning, I hurtled north at 80
behind a gently swaying semi,
daring to write this poem on the contrails above the sunrise,
when the words could at any point
have lifted me from my body,
the very one that steers itself through the landmine.
All the while, the strawberries at home send out runners,
and my children, miles away,
walk into homeroom,
just about half trusting.
Because they only have the one choice.
They only have the one world to love.
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