Category Archives: Poems

Call to Balancing

I hear the silence pop out of nothing.
The baby gulps his water with determined breath
beside me on the floor.

He eats only my breakfast from my plate
resting on my lap when I finally spread the blanket
and bring my coffee to the ground.

I listen to the crunch of toasted rye
and watch the caraway seeds drop,
see the bacon’s burnt edges coat his hands.

In a world where everything is within reach,
solitude and quiet float like monarchs in late spring,
bright, startling, luxurious, allusive.

I forget to look for them, yet am always scrambling to find them,
and here on this blanket we are alone together with only the sounds of our living.
Sip.  Gulp.  Chew.  Swallow.

You scootch close so that our legs touch, rest your hand on my thigh, press your head to my side.
You’ve been with me twenty-three months though I feel you are visiting, flashing a rascal’s smile as you turn the bend.
I am guard, guide, confidant and safe-keeper, and you are charge, protegé, secret-teller and limit-pusher.

I search for the counterweight to the days.
One brick balancing fifty pebbles.
A shovel-full of time lifting a multitude of moments.

Waiting Through

The glass door is decorated with nose-smudges,
tongue-presses, and who-knows-what kinds of fingerprints
while the Christmas window-clings lie sparkling on the floor.

Advent has popped upon the top of me,
quick on the heels of a slow-in-coming Autumn,
a Thanksgiving whose late appearance leaves me rattling.

Our hand-made turkeys still hang on the wall,
probable witnesses to the Epiphany this year:
oxen, sheep, turkey.

Even on these cloudiest and darkest December days
the mess sparkles: strewn toy villages, soggy napkins,
crumpled tissues, packed bedrooms, loose bath towels, squabbling voices.

In the attic, the wreath and four candles wait for me to find them.

Forgiveness Hides in the Housework

I run boiling hot water over the floors steaming away dirt, germs, and spilled tomato sauce.  They shine.  In the morning, strawberry yogurt splatters and speckles the dark wood dotting our landscape with accident and mistake, and by afternoon, thousands of bread crumbs confetti the counters, tables, chairs, the bottoms of our bare feet.

Now it is evening.  The joys begin to settle in the house, loosed leaves on a windless day, and I find my soul glistening in the mercies that come falling with sleep.