Writing poetry keeps me sane. Literally. When the spaghetti noodles are piling and crusting to the floor, when the recorders are tooting the same pitch mercilessly, when pee is dribbling down the leg of the child I thought was long ago potty trained, poetry has been a friend.
Someday, I've thought, I would like to write novels, but motherhood, so far, hasn't been conducive. Poetry, on the other hand, I can do. I can spend half an hour sitting on the toilet lid, supervising bath time with my eyes while fashioning a line of verse with my brain. I can be in the kitchen stacking dishes into the dishwasher with my arms, back, shoulders, waist, and turning over that line till it is smooth as a pebble. I can whittle away hours pushing swings at the park, all the time tuning the perfect metaphor.
Anchor. Music. Remembrance. Medicine. Art. Call it what you will. Poetry, for this mother, pulls me from monotony and madness.
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