Fall

http://www.ahandfulofstones.com/

Look for my poem on a handful of stones blog, under Thursday, September 30th, 2010.

Colorado's seasons are like a woman who changes her mind, changes her clothes and her perfume. Fall in Colorado to me is dusty dirt roads lined five feet deep on either side with wild sunflowers. It's hot and the air is filled with insects. Noisy and quiet at the same time. The sunflowers take over the eastern plains and front range, just east of the mountains.

Fall in the mountains is different - crisper, clear, filled with bugling elk and city people driving slow on the winding roads, craning their necks to see turning leaves.

Working Parents

What image pops into your brain when you think "working mother?" Is it a bedraggled, tired woman focused on a laptop, ignoring her screaming baby on the floor? Is it a woman with a cell phone in one hand and a crying baby in the other?

The image is a blatant stereotype of yesteryear, the invention of Stone Age guilt-mongers.

Here's the reality today: working moms and dads ARE struggling to keep their heads above water. But as they are wading through, they are holding their children up, passing them back and forth, doing everything they can to make sure their kids are happy, warm, safe, dry, rocked, cuddled and played with. Working parents - often to the detriment of their own health and schedules - go far to make sure their children are content and cared for.

Here's a new image: a muscled woman bouncing her happy smiling baby in one arm and turning off her cell phone, because she leaves work at work, where it belongs.

Animal Cruelty

When it looks hopeless
'cause my back's in screaming pain
and I'm running on three hours of sleep
and The Baby's screaming
and The Kid's whining
and the neighborhood dogs bark

little shits,
all I can imagine is
beatiful
quiet
dead
dogs
strewn about the neighborhood

it takes the Trite Cake
when I say
that what fixes it all
is reading to The Kid
about how the little boy
shot the Nightmare In His Closet
and yelled at it to stop crying
and dragged it to bed with him
to shut it up.

And The Kid's tears clear up
and he smiles.

That's all it takes
to save the neighborhood dogs
from a silenced .22.

Meditation

Body: Hey Bod, how ya doing lately?

My head hurts. I have a concussion, you know. Why did you ride that ATV this weekend? Would you please give me some Tylenol? And I'm thirsty, damn it. And quit exercising, especially the up and down sit-ups. And stop stressing about your pansa. You'll have plenty of time later to get buff.

Brain: Hey Brain, what's up?

You never turn me off. I'm ON all the time. Thinking, worrying, plotting, musing, talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. Enough already.

Spirit: Spirit, I know I haven't checked in with you, and since I've had no time alone I'm sure you are as shriveled as a popcorn kernel left in the sun and maybe you have some mold on you, and I'm sorry.

Actually, no. I am full. I am complete. I have my daughter. I have my son. I have my husband. I have utter confidence in myself. I'm good. Thanks for asking, though.

Folklore Friday

I called my grandmother today to tell her The Kid just learned how to ride the bike she bought for him.

She said she learned how to ride a bike in her hometown of Neon, Kentucky. It is an old coal mining town, in the Kentucky mountains, which are straight up and down mountains. There are a couple of streets in the narrow bottom of the valley, and houses, businesses and the graveyard march up the steep valley walls on either side.

There was one bike in town, which belonged to the local doctor's daughter. The little girl with the bike would let all the other Neon kids share. No helmets or shin guards or knee pads in the those days. Grandmother learned on a borrowed bike and her first ride was down a steep Kentucky dirt road.