When I was a child
I knew what was expected of me
I didn’t always do it
But I knew it
The time to get up
Put on my school uniform
Eat breakfast
Go to school
Be reverent and quiet in church
Listen and learn in the classroom
Obey my parents
Do my homework
Brush my teeth
Avoid, always and everywhere,
The near occasion of sin

My college years
Started with the same expectations
But then I, like so many,
Tuned in, turned on, dropped out
Still I knew what was expected:
Protest, get arrested, resist, enjoy
Sex, drugs and rock and roll

Then I got pregnant
Got married
Got some more pregnant
And there I was
Before I knew it
At the other end of childhood
Teaching my children
What was expected of them
Making their world predictable

Now I am 75
And nothing much is expected of me anymore
And I don’t know what to expect
What I should feel like
Are all these aches and pains normal
Is all this introspection normal

I think perhaps
What this time is about
From now until when
Is simply to become comfortable
With the unknowable

Sometimes my soul is restless
Because it cannot find itself

Sometimes
Because it cannot touch the divine

But sometimes
Some glorious infrequent times

My soul is only restless
Because it is dancing

Dancing with the bossy red cardinal
Claiming the birdfeeder

Dancing with my 5 year old grandson
Cannonballing into the pool

Dancing with the quiet splash of water
Into our small pond

Dancing with the creak of our chairs
As Woody and I rock on, into the evening

Dancing, even, with the dirges
As the last of Mom’s generation 
And the first of mine
Dies

“A Rock, A River, A Tree”
Her poem begins
But only the rock speaks
     “Stand on me
      and do not hide your face”
In this beginning excerpt

I have never read this poem
(A long poem, apparently)
Although a thick volume of her poetry
Autographed and well thumbed
Sits on my favorite side table
Made by Woody just as I wanted
Natural edged and natural shaped
Deep rich polished wood
Too often obscured by piles
Of mail and other to do stuff

There, on the under shelf
That does not have the beauty
Of the top
Except in its practicality

Sits the thick volume of her poems
Yet I have not read of the rock, the river and the tree

Do the river and tree ever get to speak?
Does the river say
     “Swim in me 
      and close your eyes”

Does the tree say
     “Sit under me
      and pretend you are bodhisattva
      until you are no longer pretending”

Then I will join the fish in the river
Swim across to the rock
And stand in the sun, the rain, the wind
Having no face to hide

Yesterday I lay in bed
All day
Unshed tears spilled down
Into my gut
And hardened into concrete

Unspoken love
Winged from my heart
To my head
The left side of my head

My sweaty sundress
Worn the bright day before
Lay crumpled on the floor

Today I got up
Not until late morning
But I got up
Put on the sweaty sundress
And forced myself outside

To sunshine
And leaves
Stirring in the breeze

To a showy red cardinal
Claiming the bird feeder
As his throne

To a humble song sparrow
Nesting below the roof peak
Of our brick-red garden shed

To the nuthatches pecking
Upside down
On the trunk of the red maple

To the smell of lemon balm
Planted near the porch
To ward off mosquitoes

To the music of our low fountain
Water plinking
Quiet but steady
From one small pitcher to another
Into our rock and moss pond
Surrounded by sky-seeking ferns
And one young yellow sharp leaved
Japanese maple

WOW! I thought
How could I forget
Even for a day

I live amidst goodness
Always, right here,
My balm in Gilead

In a compromise with my parents
That age ago
(they wanted near I wanted far
They wanted Catholic I wanted not)
I started college at Marquette University
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin
As far from New Orleans
As my parents would allow
But for them at least it was Jesuit
Though not Springfield,
Which was closer and
Also – importantly - where
One of my mother’s priest-cousins taught
We called him Father Junior

My parents drove me to Marquette
That first year
A drive delayed by Hurricane Betsy
My dad walked downtown from our house
To send the school a telegram
(The first like that they had ever received,
We were told when we finally arrived)
That I would miss freshman orientation
Because of a hurricane
The first night on the road 
We stayed in a motel
VERY exciting, my first time in a motel

At the diner where we ate breakfast
The next morning
After an increasingly confused exchange with the waitress
(Have you ever seen Jack Nicholson’s toast scene
In Five Easy Pieces?)
My dad was served – reluctantly – 
A block of Philadelphia cream cheese
Since he persisted that he wanted cream cheese for breakfast

And so we all three learned
That morning
Something none of us had known before
Only in New Orleans
Did cream cheese
Always
Mean Creole cream cheese
(You might know it as curds and whey
Of Little Miss Muffet fame)
A breakfast favorite

Woody waits outside
On the porch he made for us
Sitting in the rocking chair
We bought in Ohio
Coming back from Michigan
Not our last time in Michigan
Just last weekend
When we drove there
For Jack’s memorial service
Stopping for the night in Berlin, Ohio
Because we don’t do the fast 10 hour interstate way
But wind our way slowly
Through the every season beauty
Of West Virginia
And Amish country Ohio

We went the slow way
Going up for the memorial service
For Woody’s nephew
Jack loved hunting, and his hungry chickens
As Woody loves gardening, and his Japanese maple trees

We came back the fast way on Monday
Because the assisted living home called
On Monday morning
Mom was having another hypertensive crisis
And they were taking her to the hospital
Possibly
So I drove us back
Using the interstates and toll roads
Not hurrying, but not stopping for the night either

Mom is fine now
And Woody sits in his rocking chair
Waiting to take my hand
And walk together through our garden

I stare at the prompt,
“Write about uncertainty”
I sit, pen quiet, thinking thoughts
Uncertainty, I think, is my life
Uncertainty, I think, is my only sure possession
Uncertainty, I think, is my only certainty

Just as I pick up my pen to write
My phone buzzes
I have it nearby, on mute
In case it is my mother calling
Or, worse yet, her nursing home

It is my mother
I have to answer
Nothing is wrong
She just forgot this is my workshop time
And wanted to tell me her blood pressure
Is just fine
Nothing wrong today

Sigh
Uncertainty is my life

the best of poetry
ironically
is that it takes you
where words cannot go

I want no cathedral
In my head or soul
Unless it be
The cathedral of nothingness
Lifting unseen spires high 
Into its own nothingness
And within that nothingness
The sanctuary of Infinity
And within that infinity
The altar of Love
And on that love
The chalice of God
And within that god
Me
In womanly orans
Tall and uplifted
As a cathedral spire
Arms bent, spread wide
Fingers cupped
As though to catch and cradle
Anointing oil
Dripping forever
From Sophia’s chalice