When people ask me what I do, I tell them I'm a writer. The next question is often about what I write. For many years - knee high in the thick of mothering four children - I chuckled and said, "A lot of grocery and shopping lists."
So last week, when I found a grocery list in the middle of my poetry journal, I smiled. How perfect. Some of my older journals are interspersed with my children's drawings. In others you'll find remnants of hangman games that I played with my son while we waited for our food to come at our restaurant dates.
The grocery list - and the airplanes drawings and hangman games - prompted this poem.
When You Find a Grocery List in Your Poetry Journal
Sandwiched between your poems
you find the daily bread of your mothering -
notes from your son's college night and
a scribbled grocery list. At first they look
out of place. But when you move to tear
them out, you pause: how fitting that they
live here. Like your notebook your life is
not pristine. Everything bleeds into
everything else. Instead of tearing out
the pages you wish to add more -
the laundry waiting to be folded, the dirty
dishes in the sink, the to do list that's never
done; the parts of yourself you think you
need to erase from the pages of your life.
Did I feed the dog? Did I pay the bill?
Did I pause and wonder about the fig tree
dropping her ripe fruit over the fence? Did
I open my heart today to the laundry and
to the world?
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With a grateful heart, Karly