I watch you sleep, half wish you awake so I can hold you. But another voice tells me I should do something else to mark my days, not lose myself in my life with you.
Once on a beach,
the beach is misted over.
I can walk on it and not be able to see the ocean.
I go down to wade in the surf, and I can see nothing, nothing at all,
just sea and sand and sky and all the boundaries of it gone.
The enormity of this tie.
There is no sound you make that does not touch me.
I hold you and hold you.
Always I give over to you, reserve nothing to myself,
my existence now, to allow you birth.
The days
day after day unplanned,
no one I see regularly,
no work that starts at nine, ends at five, just nursing, diapers, laundry,
walking, eating, holding, playing, merging into each other in an endless sea,
no time my own, inviolate.
I have felt you as something that might cause me to lose the drift of myself: A woman in a rocking chair holding a baby. At times I’ve felt I could do that and nothing else, just be with a baby. I fear it. I am afraid to give in to myself, to go where I might lead. I need my definitions of myself, that I am a writer. That other people read what I write, and think: she is a good writer, or she is a bad writer. I must make a place for myself in the world, so people will know me and judge me, so there is more than a flow without judgment. I am afraid of losing my reflection in the world if I spend my days holding a child, singing to her.
at the beach, my hair is sandblown. I am afraid my face may be dirty without
my knowing, its expressions changed. People come to the rest stop, walk out
on Seal Rock and I fear them, that they will notice my strangeness. I am
afraid I am growing wild like the animals, that soon my friends will not
recognize me. I long to be back in my place, in my home, in my rocking
chair.
There is no one to judge me now.
Here with you I could be anyone. If you know who I am you are not old enough
to tell me. You have no landmarks, and no one is here to mark me in your face.
prev poem / poems contents / next poem
author poems stories art gallery the things that always were Erin's page favorite links
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|