There are certain feelings that I have to get at sideways. I spin and spin on them, trying to name them to my journal, to my husband, to a friend, only to fall short. That’s not quite what I mean, I think as I prattle on.1
That’s usually when I start jotting down little lines of poetry, wondering if perhaps the only way to understand what I want to say is to start by saying it as succinctly as possible.
Take the feeling of the passage of time. It is imperceptible and hard to name and sudden, all at once. As Ecclesiastes 3:1 puts it in its most memorable poem: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…”
A time to wonder if your kids will ever reach the sink, and a time to realize—suddenly—that they’ve reached your shoulder. A time to miss your mom, and a time to dance like her in the car with your own kids. A time to write important things and a time to jot lines of delight on scraps of paper when you come home from a walk.
My poetry habit is one that comes and goes seasonally, often perking back up around my kids’ birthdays or other milestones. Poems, for me, are stakes in the ground marking out what it was like to live right now. What I value most about them is that they communicate back to me the thing I was trying to name. But I’m also aware that they may not communicate that same thing to others.
Here’s to trying anyway.
As Daniel Nayeri writes in Everything Sad Is Untrue:
“Does writing poetry make you brave? It is a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously. But a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn’t crumble. Making anything assumes there’s a world worth making it for. That you’ll have someplace, like a clown’s pants, to hide it when people come to take it away. I guess I’m saying making something is a hopeful thing to do. And being hopeful in a world of pain is either brave or crazy.”
Perhaps bravery loves company too.
This Friday, I plan to read again at a local poetry group and to listen intently as others do the same. Nothing makes me want to write poetry more than feeding off the courage of others.
I’ve also been savoring My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman, who will be speaking at next year’s HopeWords conference. On Sunday afternoons, in particular, I dip in and out of poetry books, especially anthologies. It’s Christian Poetry in America since 1940 right now. And I regularly return to the book 30 Poems to Memorize (Before It’s Too Late), edited by David Kern who also now owns a great bookstore in NC! I’ve also been enjoying poetry on Substack from and .
So, in these weeks leading up to Mother’s Day, I’ve been penning poems. I’ve been grasping for words to describe some of the feelings, big and small, defining this season of life: The feeling that I’ll never be done with laundry or scheduling summer camps. The feeling that the tragic and the terrific will always exist side by side—and will we somehow learn to hold them both? The feeling that there is no perfect time to write poetry—or to do anything you really want to do. There is only the desire and the ignoring—for a little while—of all the other things that should be done instead.
A few simple poems from the trenches of motherhood…
Mental load Mostly, it’s the clothes and the holes I tell them to stop growing but they don’t They call it the mental load but I don’t know Someone has to do it and I’m home My husband tries he sighs and he reminds me “I can help” and I know this is true but I still keep a grip on what I hand him the ticker tape of life keeps playing through Maybe this is like the bed I’m making Oh wait—sometimes my husband makes that too But if there are some days I do not let him should I be mad at me or him or whom?
In bed Ruby was tucked like a jewel in a ring this morning, by my side and I sighed: “Is there anything better in all the world?” Last night, she was screaming, bloody-red like I was torturing by putting her to bed “Is there anything harder in all the world?” I said. Today, the news bleeds it reads of wars upon wars oceans away Yet we remain in the beds we’ve made we wonder, we pray, “Is there anywhere better than all this world?” Until there is, we stay.
Timeworn There is a poem on my lips and after this sip I’ll— “Kids! I nearly slipped and fell on your shoes again!” Where should I begin? The pit-pat of rain has refrained for a while and I smile to think that— “Who sat on this toilet and didn’t flush?!” I can almost feel the hush of the afternoon, hot tea and the way— “Hey, didn’t I say no food in your rooms?” There’s a place in Tulum always flush with blooms where the desert meets jungle— “If I have to fumble around in the dark for that glass of water one more time…” There’s never quite enough of it, that is to say, time, when life seems to often compete with the rhyme.
We Shall All Be Changed has been out for three months now, and I’m so grateful for the warm welcome it’s received. This is a great week to gift a copy of the book (code motherhood for 40% off at Moody) to someone who may be without a mom this Mother’s Day. The audiobook version is also on sale from audiobooks.com for $7.50 right now and can easily be gifted.
Find a list of my latest podcast appearances & where to order We Shall All Be Changed: How Facing Death with Loved Ones Transforms Us on my website.
Now for the big question… if I drop links here at the bottom of this note to two things I’d like for Mother’s Day, will my husband see them? Or will one of you send them to him?
Prattle is the word of the day. I awoke to the sound of chatter between Cora, age 9 and Ruby, age almost 4, sitting at the top of the stairs outside our bedroom door. “She’s just prattling on,” Cora said of her little sister… and this I know is true. “Great word!” I said. “Oh, thanks. I learned it from Shakespeare.” I am footnoting this for myself.