Feeling the Roar

This morning I awoke

In the final moments of predawn

Light filtering through my windows

Sourced by a blanket of muted gray

My serenade? A chorus of rain

Cascading down the drain pipe

Outside my sliding glass door

In a symphony of song

Lately I scan my body

Before I begin my day

Today in celebration

Sensing the pain is finally at bay

I feel a clock like urge to rise

But then remind myself

It is Sunday, the one day

Time relents, generously standing still

I snuggle against my husband

Leaning into his warmth

And listen to the rise and fall

Of his sweet sweet breath

Weeks of false starts

Have finally given way

To a radical release

Body yielding to its healing

I eventually emerge

Arms outstretched

And silently exclaim,

“The sciatica has broken!”

My revelatory remedy?

Deep, deep rest

As a recovering over-doer

This concept is hard to feel

We live our lives

Chasing unlived dreams

Rushing to outrun our demons

Forgetting who we are

But when we ignore its whispers

The body responds with a roar

On Words and Wanderlust

Sometimes

It arises in me

A wanderlust

A yearning to travel

To the other side of the earth

For an African safari or to

Witness

the Seven Wonders of the World

But I do not travel

By airplane

Or train

Or bus

Or even on foot

My wanderlust wants words

To feast

On the words

On the page

To fill my empty cup

To quench my thirst

To turn my water into wine

So I don’t have to celebrate alone

I skim an anthology of poetry on my bedside table

Read the poem a day in my email inbox

from my favorite poet du jour

Listen to an author analyze their work in conversation

with a podcast host I recently discovered I like

But something leaves me lonely

And the billowing echoes

Reverberate

Back at me

My melody unmet

Pondering the possibilities of

Something salty

Or tangy

Or fruity

Or bittersweet

On my lips

I am struck

In a moment of

Excruciating clarity

By the obvious truth

While your words are wise

His sentences sound sacred

Her paragraphs are perfect

Their chapters cast completion

In a wash of relief

I recognize

The words I need are mine

And so tonight

I settle in to write

Beautiful Things

In a recent Writing Circle, I offered the prompt, "Write about something beautiful in your life that you have wanted to hold onto but ultimately could not." This is what I wrote in response. What emerged was two brief poems, each about a different aspect of parenting my two beautiful children, Kyle and Ella.

Hero of the Day

Last week she came home from school

Completed paper in hand

The assignment?

To write a letter to someone in her life she called a hero

She could have chosen her soccer coach

A teacher or her very best friend

But instead

She chose me

Essence in Lake Tahoe

On a slow walk

Down a quiet street

In the cool September air

My son

Still in uniform from a soccer match earlier in the day

Now indisputably taller than me

Saunters in between us

Me on the right

His father on the left

In the darkness

We are surrounded by tall Tahoe trees

The mountains at my back

The lake practically before my feet

We are one continuous chain

The original family unit

My daughter

Resting at home with grandmama

Has opted out of this adventure

Designed for her older brother

With this original unit reunited

His essence re-emerges

The usual bantering

Bickering

Vying to be seen

Erased in an instant

I marvel at

his propensity to play endless practical jokes

his willingness to release the bitterness of defeat

his clever wit

his effortless sense of ease

I place my hand on the back

Of his sunburned neck

And to my surprise

He does not recoil

This is my greatest victory of the day.