Startling awake in the morning,
I wonder that my life is this one all around me,
the smells in the kitchen, my body marked and mapped
by babies and garden work and sitting too long to write.
I notice more every day, how nothing is shadowed
but whole and solid, how the frozen lilac branches
soften, bud, embarrass us with fragrance.
Faces are precious things I pick up and hold,
feeling their contours against the bones of my chest,
releasing them into deep sky.
Will they be the clouds I see when I am very old,
will they return to me in the glitter of dew,
in the clear waters of Jackson Run,
swollen with snowmelt and rain, warming in late afternoon
when the children run down with their nets,
hoping for whales, treasure, a wriggling minnow,
something that they can touch and call their own.
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3 comments:
I love the lilacs embarrassing you with their fragrance.
This is a fake haiku with not the right amount of syllables.
the oven heating to 400 degrees
waiting for potatoes with eyes still
popping out their skin
Of this lovely poem, the first lines are my favorite...I, too, am sometimes startled awake into my life's riches...but mostly, I love the "marked and mapped" image. Write more! Write more!
Oh, Sarah, those pobresito potatoes. They sound as if they are in agony. First the oranges bleeding and now the eyes popping out. HORRIFIC fruit & vegetable imagery! I love it--what will be tomorrow? Meat and dairy in pain!
:) Seriously, where's today's haiku? Don't leave me hanging.
Jill, I like how you put it: 'startled into my life's riches.' Thanks for your encouragement.
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