If We Move In Too Many Directions

The love of children breaks the heart

and can crack it open to a million joyful miracles,

while also simultaneously leaving us

pulverized,

pulled in a million directions,

panting and exhausted

disheveled –

a shadow of a former self.

 

Here (in this tired place)

there is no Big Love –

just sloppy, chaotic, choppy love

smeared by crumbs and dirty socks

and utterly submerged in a divine,

huge

mess.

 

Meanwhile, the skin scrapes off again but no bandaid works.

Routine rules all moon phases

and the mother still picks up the pieces:

broken parts of toys, uneaten meals, and over-run schedules

absorbing the echo of too many sounds competing

for attention and time all at once.

Clamoring for air and rest, but when not finding it in sane places

she washes up on a shore of compost and left over muck from lifetimes

of unloved work.

 

 

You see, if we move in too many directions

(and especially without love)

there is no center at home –

and the whole society suffers:

Crying with madness for hearth and heart

but too often only finding the unhappy Mother

spread thin to the bone.

 

That is the difference this time: to be a woman relishing the gifts of freedom

but not being undone by it.

That must be the difference this time: to find the center,

to find love for and in the work,

to find rest in sane places,

coming back again and again as our own newly born versions of ourselves.