stranger son

I loved a boy
with an easy smile,
an eager heart,
an aim to please.
For seven years
I knew his face,
and he knew mine -
we were the same,
or so it seemed.

I lost that boy,
I don't know where,
or how, I only
know he's gone.
He's here, but not
the boy I loved,
and now my work
is just to love
another

(him).

He wears the face
of the boy I loved,
the easy boy,
and I forget --

Oh, let me not forget!

To love this boy
with the grimace face,
the angry fist,
the fearful heart:
we're still the same,
beloved, still.

I love a baby

I love a baby
for all she doesn't know:
for sweet ignorance,
for the fresh start,
for a thousand mistakes
I haven't made
yet.
I love a baby
for all she doesn't do:
feet that don't run,
arms that don't fold,
lips that don't speak a word
yet.
I love a baby
for all she doesn't need:
no hard decisions
and no discipline,
no tests or therapies,
no parent-teacher conferences
yet.
Oh! how I love a baby.

three sons

Dandelion flower
an hour before dawn,
balled up small,
I wait
for the slow
grow of chill gray
into lighter day,
aching for
sun, son, and Son.

his mother's son

How his eyes crinkle
when he smiles,
the way he gets lost
in a book,
his tender heart,
his hair:
the me in him
I love to see.

If only we gave
only the good.

How the ghosts of
imaginary expectations
haunt him,
the way correction
makes him squirm,
his tender heart,
his fear:
the me in him
I cannot take away.

God help us both.

sickbed mass

Prayer, and the laying
on of hands,
anointing the head,
singing the psalms.
Offering the cup by
candlelight,
the great thanksgiving.
All these I do
and more tonight,
priest of the bunk bed
parish, keeping the
night watch,
tending the sick.
The Holy Fathers
must have been
watching the mothers
when they wrote
the Missal.

in defense of losing it

If I hadn't broken down,
hadn't broken open,
if I hadn't cried,
let the failure and
frustration spill over
where he could see it
(which has always
felt to me
like more failure),
he might not have
risked crawling
out of bed,
wrapping his arms
around my waist,
resting his head on
my belly and saying
he loved me --
might have missed
that thin place
where we do the
real work of being
human together
in God's hands.

first(born) love

The typical culprits
tend to pass me by:
I laughed on the first day
of kindergarten,
smiled at all the birthdays,
and shook my head
over each box of too-small
clothes I stacked in
the garage.
But last night on the boat
in the bright hour between
sunset and dusk
with a full moon over
calm water,
the weight of your
head on my shoulder
pricked my eyes
and dropped down heavy
into my mother-heart.
Around your life-jacket
my arms felt small, short
like my days as the
queen of your little boy-heart.
The milestones will surely keep
coming; but, oh my sweet son,
the little moments
I will keep for us.

laughing on ash wednesday

My printer was on the fritz,
as if that's a reason
to lash out at a
child --
even a child who is careening
wildly and making
a horrible racket while
you are trying to prepare for
a worship service.

Later I am sitting, penitent
in the pew,
confessing and obsessing.
Someone is reading scripture
but I am writing this poem in my head and it's about hurting
people we love-

He is writing too,
balancing the hymnal on
his lap and scrawling in the
margins of the bulletin;
it is a poem
for me. I am afraid it
will make me cry
because my guilt is still
fresh. But two hours
is a lifetime for a six-year-old
poet:

I love you I love you I love you divine,
Please give me some bubble gum,
You're sitting on mine.