Getting older, noticing more

It’s been a week, am I right? I continue to feel pretty shattered by the violence in the headlines, and am weathering a transition moment at home (school is out, our plans are topsy turvy, all the things). Somehow today a poem felt like the right offering for you all. (I write a bit of poetry, but don’t share it very often.) I hope it helps you in some small way today.

And please comment: what do you notice more the older you get?

Knee Sounds

The older I get the more I notice

knee sounds

my own quiet desires

dumb egos

baby’s sharp intuition 

the return of the blackberries

boneheaded binaries.

Sometimes I long for an organized drawer 

or a morning without the realization that one went to school with unbrushed teeth

but then I remember how short life is

how wide my forgiveness

mostly of others

more and more myself.

The noticing is mostly small.

Sometimes it’s big.

This life I walk through

is not what I expected.

How could I have imagined her first questions upon waking or his tender body? 

How could I have known I would birth my own much-needed teacher on solitude?

Or care so much about those two red poppies?  

Aging is a long, drawn out experiment in being wrong about how you will live, who you will be, what you will love and see

and love and see and love and see

and that’s okay.

It’s more than okay.

Each day unpromised and fecund.

 

I am worse than I thought 

and also better.

Humanity, too.

When the violence is too much

I touch a lot of tree trunks 

eat some more bread.

watch my kids sleep their sweaty sleep

and try not to let any of it 

tragic or tender 

feel inevitable.