I took today off work, and then I pretty much worked all day long--on poems and cover letters and resumés and church music. My life rarely is without tasks that need to be completed, for the library or university or churches or home.
I also spent a lot of time thinking about my kids--my daughter who's 24 and heading off to med school in a couple months, and my son who's 16 and will be a senior next school year. It seems like yesterday they were just tadpoles swimming in my wife's belly.
Sharon Olds reflects on the birth of a child . . .
The Moment the Two Worlds Meet
by: Sharon Olds
slick, whole body comes out of me,
when they pull it out, not pull it but steady it
as it pushes forth, not catch it but keep their
hands under it as it pulses out,
they are the first to touch it,
and it shines, it glistens with the thick liquid on it.
That's the moment, while it's sliding, the limbs
compressed close to the body, the arms
bent like a crab's cloud-muscle legs, the
thighs packed plums in heavy syrup, the
legs folded like the wings of a chicken--
that is the center of life, that moment when the
juiced, bluish sphere of the baby is
sliding between the two worlds,
wet, like sex, it is sex,
it is my life opening back and back
as you'd strip the reed from the bud, not strip it but
watch it thrust so it peels itself and the
flower is there, severely folded, and
then it begins to open and dry
but by then the moment is over,
they wipe off the grease and wrap the child in a blanket and
hand it to you entirely in this world.
Sharon Olds pretty much captures the experience of childbirth for women in this poem. For nine months, the fetus swims in its own little liquid world of heartbeat. Then the woman's body opens, and a new body appears, becomes a part of this world we all know. That previous world of ocean and warmth and music becomes ancestral.
It always feels to me like I'm shuttling back and forth between different worlds. Library world to university world to poetry world to church world to blog world. I've juggled this whole solar system of worlds most of my life. Occasionally (not often in the last couple years), I'm able to take a break, visit an uncharted world to just relax and forget about life on my other planets.
I haven't taken a true traveling vacation for quite a while. No lounging on the beaches of Cancun. No climbing the Swiss Alps. No tours of the Louvre. Instead, when I take time off, I stay home with my dog, sleep a lot, write a lot, read a lot, and binge TV a lot.
It is the cusp of full summer now. As I said, my daughter is moving away in a little over a month, and, in a week or so, my son will finish up his junior year of high school. My worlds are going to shift and expand again. I'll probably be on the road a lot more in the coming years. I have no idea what birthdays and holidays are going to be like. To paraphrase the book of Exodus, I will be a stranger in a strange world again.
Saint Marty wrote a poem about vacations for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Write two ten-line pomes about two places you've visited--one that you loved and one you disliked or didn't like as well. Now, intersperse the lines of the place-you-loved poem with the lines of the place-you-didn't-like-so-much poem until you have one twenty-line poem.
Honeymoon at Seashell City
by: Martin Achatz
we stand at the edge of that igneous
moonscape in the dark, watch
a man-eating clam under glass, mouth
propped open, a mousetrap waiting for
the lava roar off the cliff into the Pacific,
a sound like the beginning of the world
a curious toddler to wander by,
boxes of dried starfish, polished conchs
in our ears, so loud I have to press
my lips to my wife's ear for her
displayed like produce in a grocery store,
tomato snail shells, sea cucumbers
to hear my words even though I really
have nothing to say about Hadean
carved wooden gull glued onto a piece
of driftwood bleached almost white
oceans under her body's volcanic pull and
my hunger for the magma of her skin
by waves and sun and time while
the Beach Boys croon about Kokomo and surf
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