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Motherhood on the One Quiet Night
Today our truculent son left for a week.
Tonight my husband reads and, for my sake,
listens to music with the headphones on,
knowing I’m close outside, the windows are open;
knowing I pounce on quiet when I find it.
The grief: I cannot seem to move beyond it,
but in this silence I will try to save
some shred of this beastly day, try to believe
in redemption, and that I am not the beast—
voice tight, teeth showing, my hour come round at last.
Ivan Aivazovsky, The Shipwreck in a Stormy Sea (Public domain)
Wreck and Restore Me
Once on a violent afternoon
I prayed Please take me apart, and soon.
I fear what’s before me,
and grow despairing, mean and hard.
Demolish and renovate me, Lord.
Wreck and restore me.
Habit by habit, flaw by flaw,
break and mend me under love’s law.
The work requires it.
Retrofit me to do your will.
Yes, I know it will hurt, and still
my soul desires it.
Straighten what I have ruined or bent
for years since I was innocent.
Help me be mild.
The good in me please amplify
until this boy and you and I
are reconciled.
Contributed By
Jane Greer founded Plains Poetry Journal in the 1980s and edited it for fourteen years. Her first poetry collection was Bathsheba on the Third Day (Cummington Press, 1986) and her latest is Love Like a Conflagration (Lambing Press, 2020). She lives in North Dakota.
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Marianne Helen Jones
This is a wonderful and wonderfully honest poem with which I identify. The worst times in my life were during this season when my daughter was acting out and I was torn apart with fear, grief and rage. And yet, it led to a necessary rending that changed me and my relationships for the better, by God's grace. I would not relive that pain for anything, yet I would not go back to the person I was before, either. Thanks to the poet for her honesty and vulnerability!
TR
Your poems are beautiful and give words to emotions that are hard to express. Thank you.