Tag: writing

Artistic Identity

No matter how busy motherhood gets, I can’t imagine giving up my creative activities. I just read an article by a woman who did exactly that. She was a blogger and photographer, and she did no work for two years while she took care of her children. She said that she needed to be more present with them. She’s not the only one I have heard of who has done that. I have friends who have done that as well.

I admire the self-sacrifice and self-control, but I can’t really imagine doing that myself. Maybe it’s good that I have to stop at one child, as much as I wanted to have more. But if I had 10 kids I have a feeling I would still be squeezing in time to write poems or to paint. That maybe I would be in a situation at that point where I shouldn’t be doing those things, but I would do them anyway.

Poetry is such a part of me that I can’t imagine giving it up. I go through spells where I primarily read poetry rather than write it. When I do that I am often soaking up inspiration and gearing up for a period of intense writing. But to simply not have poetry in my life? I can’t even imagine.

Painting and photography have become primal urges for me. I can’t imagine putting my camera down as some of the mother photographers do. I might sometimes get lazy or too busy to take out my expensive camera, but I’ll at the very least be taking photos on my phone.

Perhaps all of this is selfish or self-absorbed, but I’m not so sure about that. Everyone needs their own identity. Everyone needs something that they love to do and an opportunity to do it. Naturally your husband and children have to take priority, but you can’t draw from an empty well. If you want to give them more, then you have to give yourself something. So many women say they’ve lost their identity in motherhood, and I just can’t relate. When I had my daughter I became even more myself. I still had all the artistic aspects of myself, all the general personality traits like introversion, I still liked the same foods and movies, only I was finally fully tapped into my maternal potential. Having a child didn’t sap my sense of identity. It completed it.

Not that I think I am really at risk of this, but I pray that I never put down the pen or the camera or the brush. These things are apart of me. Without them I think I would fall to pieces.

From One to Another

Small as a pond,

You are bordered by mossy velvet.

You act like me.

Rivers do not

associate with women.

First I was a fish.

Then I was provided with womanhood.

The oars on the canoe

Love one another in Morse code.

I’ll walk under the hollow water.

My understanding of

beauty and all that you can do

flourishes like kelp,

always below the surface.

Human

Humanity is crouched

beneath the table

where my glass leaves

a ring.

Dust is wedded to success.

In the humanness that

roams the rooms –

a forgettable act of kindness

in skivvies.

My inner warden

patrols beneath my skin.

Lowly instinct,

leave your hiding!

Your enemies have finished counting,

And have hung your better

Natures from the doorframe

with a steel cable.

I remember the elevator it

Came from,

Dipping the car

Up and down from the bottom

Of the hospital to the top

Like ladle to bowl.

Lemons in the kitchen

are twisted.

The dishwasher is broken,

But the knives have been

Sharpened on teeth.

Out from under the furniture

Comes my neighbor’s

Selfishness and my rage.

I finish my soda.

This should be good.

Telemarketers

I stand in the sweaty afternoon

with my plucky face bared

to inconsiderate air.

I played cymbals until sound

quit without notice.

Even the waves beat the

rocks noiselessly.

I am leaking from my skin,

Watering the grass.

Marketers breathe into their telephones,

into territories of love and laundry.

into the most private

biomes of gratitude and violence.

Can I buy an antibiotic

for the infection in my thoughts?

Mornings are mundane.

Behind me,

The soundless ill intent

of summer.

Above,

the sun counting the life that

slips from me in grams.

Lover

The soft lassitude

of a day parked by the fire,

like a car primed for a

make out session between

secret sex singers.

A leg soft and gently

dimpled,

an arm resting on the

pillow.

Outside,

a sea of hats I wear

to greet the constraints

of time and truth.

Fingers graze my nipples,

a hand cups my belly.

I have harvested the

secrets planted in my

garden long ago,

and they sit in a vase

drinking heavily from

their water.

She is my mirror,

but softer and more

at home with placid

calm.

The glass fell away from us,

and now we interlace in

front of a fire cooler than us.