Tag Archives: being loved

Storing Up

Bare feet in the October afternoon
we peel apart the flowering silks
of season-ending sweet corn;

the scent of sugared earth floats
as we tear the still-green leaves
revealing rows of cobbed kernels.

Snapping free the stalk and
tossing aside the husk,
we lay the ear by for blanching.

The girls yank and pull and tug
at the shucking, laugh, and grasp
a silk or two with the tips of their fingers

and run through the grass.  I boil, blanch, and shock
the loaded cobs, fillet sheets of gold nuggets into the pan,
spoon the bags full of summer’s gifts for winter’s darkness.

I fill these poems with yanking, pulling, tugging,
shucking, laughing, grasping, running,
the sweetness of childhood’s gifts for the winter’s darkness.

What Blessing is This?

He hurls himself
onto my leg, my chest,
from everywhere in the house
he comes flying across the floors,
bare feet smacking the wood and padding the carpet;
he is laughing, or crying, or thinking as he runs,
but always he is shouting
“I Love You, Too, So Much!”
then whispering
“i love you too so much”
and he squeezes me
and then he is gone
and I will soak it in while I have him,
while he fits in my arms.