ODE TO A LITERARY MOTHER

It has been only slightly more than a day that I have spent in the company of my mother and father, yet in being more fully washed in the status of 'daughter' (while at the same time helping to launch my youngest child as she moves into her first apartment to commence the first chapter of her adult/student life), I am taken back to the days when I was a young mother of small children.  

To say I was frustrated because the demands of mothering prevented my being able to write would be an understatement.  While I regret none of the sacrifices, I did at the time pen my angst in this poem as well as in the accompanying illustration.  I recall it wound up being widely distributed from mother to mother/friend to friend at the time.

But it is good now to be here in the company of those who knew me and loved me before I knew or loved myself and even more wonderful to know my daughter will be watched over by those same true hearts.  And while I cannot commit to writing a full post during this time, I can share a bit of what was once my reality.  I don't doubt there are young mothers today pacing in those same shoes of sacrifice for their families.  Perhaps they can relate and can take heart not to give up the dream even as they feel compelled to set it gently aside for a time.

The dilemma with my writing poetry these days

-apart from sporadic writing malaise

and trying to make sense of a life that does not;

translating a heart which I’ve long since forgot-

Is being prolific while wiping a nose

or changing a diaper....you know how it goes:

invaded by Gerbers and juvenile faces

my renegade soul mocks its domestic paces

foregoing the remnants of artistic ambit

 to service a far more conventional gambit

And while I resemble whom I was before, 

I reek now of pablum and wax from the floor

I’m still awake nightly, though not writing prose

but placating infants refusing to doze.

How does one remain a staid woman of letters

when one is surrounded by chronic bed-wetter’s?

So lost in dispassionate, suburban gloom

my most literate challenge is now GOODNIGHT MOON

While there ARE mightier tasks than with pen or with sapier

I’m still Auden at heart, but I’m Big Bird on paper.