Hello, friends. It’s good to be back here today to share a poem.
I began writing this one six years ago, during a short stint of homeschooling our daughters after we moved across the country. But then the kids returned to school, I started a new job, and I never quite got around to finishing it.
The world has changed dramatically since then, in terrifying and grievous ways. Or, the actual truth: these daily threats to health and safety have always burdened many people, and they’ve recently begun to intrude on the bubble of racial, economic, and historic privilege that I live in. The world feels like it’s coming apart at the seams, and it’s painfully clear how shoddy the seams are.
This short poem is not about that. It’s more mundane, about helping a reluctant tooth-brusher, night after night, after long days of not getting any personal space. It’s about trying to raise young kids when you’re cooped up with them and lacking the perspective that comes with a change of scenery. It’s about coping mechanisms and how we’re still graced with small, sweet moments of human connection in spite of ourselves.
Perhaps you can see why I hauled this poem back out to sit with it again. My kids no longer need toothbrushing supervision, and as of this week, one of them is taller than I am. But right now, I’m craving the quietness and reflection that come from poetry, and I’m craving time near some trees to help me make sense of everything.
Field Study
Mark a sapling’s new growth
by watching the backdrop,
not the tree.
Find signs of change
not in isolation, but in the relation
of stem to ground, leaf to air,
and branches to canopy.
She’s growing fast this year,
but it’s easy to miss —
since she fills your field of vision,
stitched as close as your shadow,
eclipsing the landscape.
Some days, to generate space,
you stop looking her in the eye.
She still needs much tending.
In the evening, you stand behind her
and brace her head with your belly.
She tips back, all neck and open beak
like a featherless hatchling,
so you can take a brush
to her teeth.
She fidgets against your trunk.
Note how the crown of her head
now grazes your sternum.
You meet her gaze again, at last —
then watch! — from upside-down,
her round eyes bend
into two small grins.
The post A Poem for Reflection appeared first on The Art of Simple.