She’s working on me through tears:
the hardness I pressed down
onto my lips, my cheeks, my eyelids,
She’s melting it, washing the hardness away.
So that now I see
so many things I saw and judged
and felt triumphant over,
over-looking them,
from my high vantage point of ‘beauty and brains’
the self-sufficiency of the ‘loner child.’
I’ve been now crushed down to join the mash
so that I can clearly see that all along they were me.
I should have seen, from all I saw
that I was headed there too
- heartbreak hotel - to
the land of the childless couple,
the unbudded and bitter.
Before I wed I saw them
standing there
at the front of the line
in the Boswell House,
the place where we later
ate our wedding dinner.
And they seemed attractive to me at the time,
they were tall and straight
and their stately heads,
erect and handsome,
radiated spiritual light,
yet their connection to each other
appeared intimate.
My own mother bailed from the childless canoe
with the help of doctors
and the prayers of a cloistered nun,
yet strangely, she didn’t seem to want me
once she got me,
or not completely - she felt ambivalent.
This is not uncommon among those
who struggle to attain some prize
and after getting it feel overwhelmed.
Now I’m rowing that old dugout.
And I know that
the real pain is coming
from the loss of ego
- it’s a lot to give up
those pictures of yourself:
the happy matriarch
beloved of all the clan,
the maker of biscuits
with upper arms and breasts like
loaves of bread,
near the frowsy milky heads
of your young
watching them grow to
adolescence,
young adulthood.
To accept the aloneness of the spiritual life.
Yes, Divine Mother is using tears now
to clear my eyes
so I can see.
* * *
This is one of my ongoing issues: our infertility. It's all a long time in the past now. I wrote this poem in 2002, and at that time I was newly at the age when there could be no further doubt that it wasn't going to happen. I mean, conception. So, in my mind, it makes sense that I would have another go-round with all the feelings at that time.
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