Women's Stories

the ones we tell each other,

late at night or early in the morning

over coffee & a cigarette,

more than one if it's a story we've told

over and over like chain smoking, like

dirty laundry soaking in the tub, stains

evoking lost memories of teething, cut

lips, blood on the sweatshirt where

you held his head & he bled all over you

& you want to speak about this love

you have for other women who listen

intently, with their own pain showing

& many cigarettes to carry them

through the telling.

a compassionate voice or ear,

the closeness we feel yet cannot say

because we're afraid of a label

but what we really want, I want,

is someone fearless, a weaver of words

or truthteller, someone who's not afraid

of hurting while resetting a bone.

to talk about the helplessness of being

stuck in a house with a sick child,

the boredom that strikes,

the complaining we do, being called martyr

when all I really want is to tell someone

how unfair it is that I'm the only one

they call for in the middle of the night

& it's my ears hear them coughing

at 3 a.m. & I can't just lie there.

how to find out what our own needs are

& how to take care of ourselves,

not just wait for him to come home, take over,

pick up the toys and the pieces, mop up our spills,

how to find a quiet time, time alone,

time to think & write.

our need to be replenished with each other,

filling up our bowls with sugar & coffee

so we can tell our stories

not just talking over fences in the backyard

but actually getting out & seeing women

doing the same hard work,

no pay, no thanks, just their little faces

when one least expects it, smiling & asking

me to sing a song about I love you

 or making up a song about superman

all by himself in the living room.

he says, go away mom, don't talk (meaning

I have to do this alone, don't listen

cause it might not be perfect the first time).

I send you this in guise of a letter

because that's the way the words are falling out

of my fingers. in my mind I hear

the tapping on keys and it comforts me

at least I can listen to myself talk

without talking out loud (for that's

what crazy women do).

so I keep on writing & dreaming

trying to live truthfully

with my emotions, in my body

and I hope you do the same.

from Little Mother, Jennifer Boire

published 1997

Suddenly in two worlds

 with apologies to Wallace Stevens

A woman is always suddenly in two worlds,
over the morning's breakfast plates
jammed up knives, amid soccer behind the hedge,
screaming, thuds, kicked leather.
The wind calls her to write: birds at the feeder
startle when the big black dog runs out
and her poems are suddenly startled, fleeing
before she can grab paper and pen.
The kids come in: one tries her flute, he opens
the side gate to greet the barking lab.

We are many worlds wrapped up in
this green space, the (good) Mom she tries to be
while the Poet skulks back into the slow cooker
left on simmer all day, closes the notepad
and pads in socking feet back
to the kitchen. 

Motherless

Julien somersaults onto my lap, Caitlin drums
in the dark basement. I fear for
their lithe bodies
that jump & fall, bounce back,
and blithely go,
while lightning strikes the ground
around them.

Today I feel like a motherless child.
My hips are creaky as an old door.
Where do you go, when you're only lonely,
curled up on your bed
with an ancient urge
to suck your thumb?

I was mothered, and also abandoned.
Now I mother me,
and God mothers me
& I am not alone.

(I wish my children faith in that kind of power,
in the face of winds that devour.)

Mother Love

“If it is in a woman’s nature to nurture then she must nourish herself.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Choosing to Stay at Home with kids, poem

A Woman's Choice

It's the small details:
rat's nest in his hair,
holes in her tights,
who is whose friend today at school,
making sure the right combo of green & orange
gets into their mouths, being there at 3:45
to greet the loudmouth bus driver &
rescue my five year old from bumpy sleep.

No pay, long hours, no public recognition
yet in my heart a small voice says
cancel all job interviews
hold that resume in a file waiting,
like my high heels and work suits in the cupboard,
let my degrees gather dust on the wall.

I want to be there when the first tooth falls,
a quiet rite of passage & mine to revel in.
It means postponing ego strokes.
It means no time just for me, but also
not being split down the middle working double shifts.
I can wait for the glory of a pat on the back & a salaried job.

Right now there's some small things I must attend to:
this three-year-old in pigtails, this fragile boy in the schoolyard.

published in Mothering Magazine