The parent of adolescents is part of who I am in these years of my life, and it is a weird, wonderful and painful experience, which confuses, puts perspective and humbles. I try to do the best I can but wish there was a more comprehensive user manual.

.

Not understanding a thing

.

For years I’ve read articles about adolescent brains,

focus and index finger meandering through twin studies

of fascinatingly pimply youths.

The surprising findings of physiological programming for all-

night gaming, morning conflicts, agreements made and lost

in reorganizing, rearranging neurons and synapses.

.

My time comes and sharp counsel from the uninitiated grates against

soothingly philosophical reminiscences from survivors,

because everyone knows the answers, but the questions aren’t clear.

Now, I just struggle from crisis to crisis in a heady cocktail of hormones

and philosophy, and self-questioning on paths I hadn’t planned to travel,

where I find myself looking up at my child and not understanding a thing.

.

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Saved this one for Christmas eve’s day, most beloved of days!

A candle flutters

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A candle flutters,

beyond its reflection the wind tosses rain

against our window pane,

mirrored in kaleidoscope memories

of familiar, bright-eyed faces

in tunneled reminiscence of red-green places.

.

A candle flickers

in scents of cinnamon, roasting poultry

in company with crispy, salty

meats, almonds ground and found

in rice and cream mounds

poured red fruity sauce and crystal sounds.

.

A candle trembles

in breath of chatting, laughing voices loose

in melodic arrangement chasing caroled tones

of holy, silent night, all is bright

in candle quivering light

and merry Christmas.

.

.

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This week’s poem must speak for itself, as I cannot.

Flu

 .

Nasty flu,

hammers in my head.

She scratches at my throat

and throbs in my ears.

Dizzying my thoughts with

threats of ills to come.

.

Settles painlessly in my larynx.

Voice box filled with unfamiliar speechlessness.

A reminder perhaps

of too many oral barbs.

 .

Laryngitis;

a prompt to speak kinder.

.

 .

 .

While trying to mediate this morning a poem came to me. I am trying to find stillness today, in a country where all is in a mess of politics and fearful anticipation, in a month where my community breaks up and goes to other lives in other places, not knowing what we will return to, at a stage in my life where I am wondering in an unfamiliar empty nest. I realize I am living with the sense that everything is waiting for something to happen, some epic change. But when I really examine the feeling I realize the moment is not waiting; instead every moment is monumental in its own reality.

.

This moment

 .

Feels like I’m standing here, waiting,

paused on trembling lip in blank postponement.

Monochrome shadows after action,

dim backward echo

of an approaching future.

Apprehension, suspension.

 .

Feels like waiting,

but it’s not.

 .

Irresistible forces of time, tugged by gravity,

treacherous reverberations of The Big Bang

hurtling through infinite space,

clinging to dazzling sun,

neutralizing velocity of the cautious moon.

Flinging, spinning.

 .

Feels like waiting

but it’s not.

 .

Standing on an earth suspended on fluid lava

that seeks for volcanic cracks,

while sun beats desert anvils,

winds howl over vacuums.

Tectonic rising of rock solid blistering, fracturing,

eroding, exploding.

 .

Feels like waiting,

but its not.  

 .

Body voiceless, motionless, still,

while metabolism roars in pulsing organs.

Bacteria ferment, digestion rumbles.

Respirations panting, excretion expels,

 osmosis, absorption.

Cells expire, synapses fire.

 .

Feels like waiting

but its not.

 .

 .

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