Library Mom

I worked hard for these lines.  After taking a five month break from poetry, I wrestled to produce something that made me happy.  It highlights my current life, but in broad terms.  The details, what's almost taken me down several times this week, can not be included.  All I can say is the final line became my mantra, my last effort to find patience and love for an exhausting bunch of exhausted students.  If your holiday plans are heavy on the cooking, wrapping, and caring for endless details, please make sure you leave messes behind for other people to clean up.  You need to enjoy some of life inside the madness!  Happy Holidays!

Library Mom


I knew a Pentecostal man, more pirate than priest.

Uncouth and ruddy, he traveled from California to steal churches.

He wore faded green Polos beneath his robes,

and prophesied I’d be the mother of many children,

while I wore billowing garments of chastity.

And for years his words turned tide in my mind--

discarded tusks of cosmic motherhood pecked clean and shiny.

When life gave way to matrimony,

birthing two boys, and chosen years of no more,

his oracle floated off-shore, both memory and amusement,

more lunacy than landmark.

Now lines of children crash against my door,

waiting to board La Biblioteca,

some driftwood, bleak and fossilized,

their needs like bookends,

holding stories I take home or forget.

They wait to be seen, heard,

made significant in display,

and I gather them to me,

not content to leave any ashore.

I am sea glass in their wake,

translucent yet dimmed

by Earth's best salt.