a life chosen
the sucked dryness of being a mother,
this feeling of rice paper thinness,
from giving and giving
and giving again,
ears curled inward like
dried mushrooms from listening,
arms rubber-stretched from offering comfort,
breath weak from telling and reminding,
fingers wilted like coleus
from cooking and patting,
voice crackling from
just one more bedtime tale,
this profound exhaustion
leaving nothing left to exhale –
all of this
is a privilege.
like the poems not written,
paintings foregone,
music not sung,
while engaged in the process
of sculpting lives.
if only to be replenished
by drinking passionately of
the warm perfumed wind,
song of a blackbird,
morning glory blue of the sky,
quietly listening to the brilliant aria
offered up by the sun-orange poppy
next to still boulders
and the hush of the blanketing surf
over a deep sleep.
and later,
after returning
to smaller bodies shifting and shining,
to tiny voices not unlike my own,
i will find they are writing the poems my father
frightened from me, in words i never could use,
singing the songs that were stilled from my voice,
and painting an elaborate portrait
in colors i never imagined.
Rosanne Sterne
