Where'd that come from?

Getting back to work this week has created a real division of emotion in me.  I have had the pleasure of spending a lot of time with my grandson Dave this summer and suddenly I don't get to see him at all.  When I went home for lunch today, he was swimming.  The photo above is typical of the view I get of him!  He has gone from being afraid to put his face in the water at the start of the summer to being able to not only swim, but also able to do five consecutive flips underwater and, as evidenced above, a pretty good handstand.  I am thankful that we had so much time together to make memories.  And watching him overcome his fears, actually turning them into joys, reminds me that I must do the same in my own life.

I know I am not the only one who has time juggling the various aspects of my personality.  I am proud to be a teacher, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, an artist and a writer.  Some days I am overwhelmed.  But then I realize how very lucky I am to have such a wide range of ways to vent my frustration.  The poem below resulted from such a search for peace.   The title was inspired by a statue I saw in the Louvre.  

CROUCHING APHRODITE

I can't do this today,

this brilliant juggling of gibberish

when no sounds express my longing

and I need you to help me walk.

Hold me loosely like a gifted doll,

putting first one foot and then the other,

until nothing fills my toothless pumpkin head

but endless iambs heel to toe

and we're embedded

in the sway of left to right.

I know God loves me.

How that breathless hip hop moves me!

But I need to push this pale orange air

that heats my skin past ripeness, 

need to cover the same line

over and again

until my footprints can be tracked

on this sandy, shifting path.

I need the background of chimes

to help me feel

that ambient steel sound

down my spine,

so like that unexpected tingle

when I first saw your eyes shimmering

at the bottom of the lake.

I need to know...

what does it take 

to learn to sink like that?

Inspiration comes from lots of places.  The poem below was inspired by a couple of articles in a Scientific American  magazine.

THE DISTANCE BETWEEN

At any given moment

thousands of lightning bolts bombard the planet,

phallic symbolism in action,

small miraculous impregnations...

Last week people were claiming again

to see faces on the surface of Mars

hoping the far-out landscape

might hold clues from the past.

Did they imagine alien urban wonders

where only dirt mound flukes existed?

Or was their vision the brainchild

of some Gestalt field completion theorist?

What does it matter if it made them look?

Every time I see you, I wonder

about that loneliness behind your smile.

I wonder, if I asked, if you would look at me

with first one eye and then the other

(a simple trick to make me dance).

Look at me quickly then off to the side,

and if you've been crying,

or if you squint just right,

perhaps some lightning bolts will fly.

To determine the distance to the strike,

divide by five the number of seconds 

between the flash and the thunder,

then report the distance in miles.