"I Went by the Water" (a poem)

What a week! In the last seven days, I've attended a funeral and a baptism, lost a whole day to a debilitating migraine, and watched our next president get sworn into office.

Everyone seems to be posting about Trump's inauguration, or the women's march in DC, or how unhappy they are about one or the other. . . and honestly I'm just so sick of politics, I can't stand it anymore.

As an antidote to all this, here's a poem I wrote over the summer on a solo hike--an uber-awesome and all-too-rare thing when you are a mom of three under three! I remember the day was hot, near 80, and I was sweating as I hiked around the lake. My husband was home watching the kids. I'll post some pictures from that day too, if I can find them.

I Went by the Water
7/10/16 

I went by the water to sit and listen.
To open my ears and let the truth come flooding in, 
suffocating my fears with its thick rippling drops.

But there were airplanes in the sky,
Screaming over my head,
And their engines were louder 
than the butterfly's song. 
I could not hear the frog's heartbeat 
nor his suspicious blinks 
eyeing me half-submerged 
in the muddy shore.

And the airplane's wings were stronger 
than those of the dragonfly buzzing, 
the seagulls shrieking, 
the oriole soaring, 
the crane gliding 
into the waves like a blade through flesh.

And every time I thought, 
"There! 
A flicker of silence! 
That's where the truth is. . . ."
It was a mirage, 
shattered by the foolish roar of another jetplane, 
carrying executives to important meetings, 
shuttling vacationers to five-star hotels... 
and utterly crushing the whisper of the lake, 
the tiptoe of the squirrel, 
the hush of the grass 
twinkling in the breeze.

"All of the Autumn Leaves" (a poem)

So here's the deal... I keep resurrecting this blog, and then I keep having more kids, which means less and less energy available for reading, blogging, and other personal enrichment activities. In fact, as I write this, my three-year-old is guzzling down a lime green popsicle two feet away (living dangerously) and my two-year-old is trying to roundhouse-kick my laptop. Meanwhile the baby (whom I like to joke is my favorite because she sleeps the most) is upstairs, you guessed it, asleep.

Anyway, here's my attempt to once again restart this blog. This time I'm posting a poem I wrote in October, my first one in months. It's about how fast the time goes and how powerless I feel to make it slow down. Like that song "Do You Realize?" when they say, "Do you realize that life goes fast? It's hard to make the good things last. Do you realize the sun doesn't go down? It's just an illusion caused by the earth spinning round."

So this may be the only blog post I do for the next six months, or maybe this will actually encourage me to blog semi-regularly again. Who knows.

Without further adieu, here's my poem. Rather fitting as we leave autumn behind and enter winter.


All of the Autumn Leaves
(Or, An Ode to Existential Angst)
10/21/16

How can I put this into words
And make it say something you've never heard?
How can I sketch that slippery way
A day rolls into another day?
Midnight comes and midnight goes.
I'm awake. I'm asleep.
I forgot to change clothes,
Again and again,
The clock will strike.
Again and again,
I will turn out the light,
As all of the autumn leaves blow by.

My children are growing,
They're growing too fast.
As everyone tells me,
"Well, babies don't last."
You put them to bed,
Plant their seeds in the earth,
And their bones reach out
Like roots in the dirt.
In the morning you marvel
When shirts no longer fit,
And somewhere your heart flinches: "Not yet. Please not yet."

It's dead exhaustion and pure elation.
It's all the hard work with no standing ovation.
No blue ribbons, no gold medals,
No bouquets of fragrant petals.
It's all the prayers that go unspoken,
All the talismans and tokens,
Moments strung on a rosary,
Pearls of all that's supposed to be,
Perfect and broken,
A dream awoken,
And all of the autumn leaves blow by.

Every morning I make myself
a steaming hot cup of promises,
And every evening I make myself
a frosty bowl of regret.

Photographs, photographs,
Click-click goes the shutter.
Photographs, photographs,
"Good-bye," they all mutter.
Images, ages, and imagination,
A gust of wet words
A howling of trees
Sepia-tinted memories
The crunch-swish-a-crunch
Hush now--do you hear it?
My fingers grow numb,
But ah, not my spirit.
I inhale the burnt sky and swallow the stars,
I rake and I scrape,
Til blisters are scars.
And all of the autumn leaves blow by.

But the ground's never bare,
My hands never still,
Keep raking, collecting,
Don't stop documenting,
Harvest these moments
Before winter's chill.

How can I hold on
To the infinite?
How can I grasp
This pulsing vein?
It tickles my neck
And bleeds down my shoes.
But the tighter I squeeze,
The faster it goes.
Til all of the autumn leaves blow by.