13. DO-OVER

You never even knew you’d made the grade.
The handbook you were given at your birth
Made clear that times you get it wrong
Would cancel out the times you get it right.
You make your way through childhood’s bootcamp,
Oftentimes confused when what they tell you
Doesn’t measure up to how things feel. 
And now, as you re-write the stories of your life,
You realize you never knew you’d made the grade 

Because it wasn't ever really what you cared to do.

12. HEART'S DESIRE

These waking heart-dreams, things the body knows
That mind would like to highjack, add a storyline,
Encase inside of concrete boots, weigh down with certainties,
And truths about the meta-message.
What they really want is freedom, riding up-drafts.
Following the currents of the winds and tides,
Till they find their own way back as dreams made manifest,
Wishes that you never even knew you'd made.

11. THE DREAM

1.
Long before I knew I’d be a mother,
I dreamed of beauty and of a girl (myself, I thought),
running free and even wild, adored by parents
for the brilliance of her being, given tools
that matched her passions: canvasses and paints,
footballs, bicycles and dress up clothes, knitting needles,
clocks to take apart and reconstruct, terrariums,
extra large bandaids for torn up knees and elbows,
cooking spoons and pots, swiss army knives,
clay and stone for sculpting. 

2.
Above my desk there hangs a picture of my daughters.
And though I am their mother and could
rightly be accused of bias, few would contradict me:
they are radiant and dazzlingly beautiful. 
Women who are whole, inhabiting worlds
that I will neither understand nor ever live in.
Yet as I let myself completely open to their presence, 
I allow the possibility that when 
we wish things from our deepest longings, 
these waking heart-dreams actually do come true.

10. THE CHOSEN ONE

I couldn’t know what it would mean,
That day I sat there by your bedside
Witnessing your labored journey into Death.
How I’d be left here at the center of my life
To face the turning of the years without you.
How I’d be the one to tell our children you were gone,
To comfort them and let them comfort me.
How I’d become your Widow and,
Because of all the love you’d left behind,
There’d be so many who would come to me
In hopes of feeling some small speck
Of how they’d felt when you would sit with them,
How, with your magic, you would make the world seem
Safe, abundant, clean, and filled with love.
These ways you had, I think you left some with me
When, some moments past your final breath,
I felt you cut a path right through me,
Open up a portal, change me, finally,
If too late for you to be the beneficiary,
Into the one you’d chosen 20 years before,
The one you knew was there so long before I did. 

9. SEASONS

What I remember is
The way you’d kiss the water
Just before you’d dive below the surface.
Summertime, the kids away at camp, while
You and I discover who we are without them.

What I remember is
The way you’d keep on wearing sandals
Even though the temperatures are dropping.
Autumn, apple-picking, lesson-planning
As we snuggle closer in the cooling nights.

What I remember is
The way you’d catch a snowflake on your tongue
As you’d step outside our home and make your way to work.
Wintertime, when you are free from overheated torment and
Together, we explore the simple pleasures of life’s dailyness.

What I remember is
The way you died, your last in-breath
Before the letting go, and then, incredibly, you smile.
Springtime, gentle months, the daylight lengthening
And I, to face the turning of the years without you.