What is this that
wakes me from sleep
when little ones lie
peacefully across the hall?
An idea, singular,
a snippet, a thread,
and as I rise, shaking off the covers,
it is gone like the years.
Here they come to
knock and pile and kick and twist
and the losing, the tearing away,
settles into a brow
So that even when food is given,
smiles are shared, love lifts
the top of a wooden table,
it is there, a great hole of nothing
Nagging, stealing, splashing light with gray,
turning a head from what is before
and around and all in between
so the happy day smudges at the edges.
It is work and pain
and pleasure and despair,
love and hate,
a relentless torture, this art.
And yet
it is life for
the ones it calls
who dare to dance.
This is an excerpt from Textbook of an Ordinary Life: poems. For more of Rachel’s poems, visit her Reader Library page, where you can get a few volumes for free.
(Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash)
