Author’s Note: Back in January when New Year’s resolutions were all the rage, I set a goal for myself to write creatively once a month. I didn’t care if anyone read it, I just wanted to do it for me. I was successful during the months of February, March, and April, but then fell off the bandwagon. Over the weekend, I went to a writing symposium with my dad. There was a part of me that was not excited about…
Snowy Monday mornings make me long for summer – when children sleep in and no one cries about their clothes. That peaceful reign is distant from today’s anarchy. Bodies collide in hallways, shoes are wrestled onto unwilling feet, both food and clothing negotiations culminate in hysteria. We spill into the garage a cacophony of nagging and whining. Grievances abound until we reach the school’s circle drive – a place of injustice amnesia. Ill will erased, little limbs clamber for hugs,…
Joy is measured through that we touch daily. golden light stripes the wall in morning as apparition appearing (though no false god this!) to silently nudge slumber with a most gentle alarm of holiday dream. was it a dream? — no matter. to heat, to water! to the green depths of lake that curtain summer stage. a dive, then first breath, the slow blurring of edges, the lack of form between things. soon a plot unfolds. cloud and shadow scheme,…
Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. – Robert Frost
In spite of having a father that has a slight obsession with bicycles, I’ve always been a little timid about riding my own. I squeeze my brakes for dear life when going downhill and am skittish in traffic. As long as I have a patient companion I’ll venture out and generally have a good time, but rarely go by myself. Noel has gotten really good at riding his bike to do all kinds of errands and quite frankly I was…
At the end of every day I play one final round of hide and seek with all of the sippy cups. Fetching them from beneath sofas, out of sand pails, and off the back porch. I tuck them all into the dishwasher to be washed while their owners sleep. At the children’s first stirrings in the morning, the sippy cups are retrieved one by one from their safe haven to dutifully perform their bout of service before they disappear. Really,…
Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, its white flag waving over everything, the landscape vanished, not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness, and beyond these windows the government buildings smothered, schools and libraries buried, the post office lost under the noiseless drift, the paths of trains softly blocked, the world fallen under this falling. In a while, I will put on some boots and step out like someone walking in water, and the dog will porpoise…
The day I wear purple flannel pajamas past noon multiple people knock on my door needing to speak with me. Ignore the stretch of the juvenile sock monkey print over my round, six months and counting belly and how I’d greeted Medusa in the mirror that morning with mascara smudged eyes. It would be nice if anyone stopped by on the many days that I comb my hair and change my clothes, but if that’s what it takes to get…
The snow began here this morning and all day continued, its white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning; such an oracular fever! flowing past windows, an energy it seemed would never ebb, never settle less than lovely! and only now, deep into night, it has finally ended. The silence is immense, and the heavens still hold a million candles, nowhere the familiar things: stars, the moon, the darkness we expect and…
The Poetry of Bad Weather Someone had propped a skateboard by the door of the classroom, to make quick his escape, come the bell. For it was February in Florida, the air of instruction thick with tanning butter. Why, my students wondered, did the great dead poets all live north of us? Was there nothing to do all winter there but pine for better weather? Had we a window, the class could keep an eye on the clock and yet…