Finding Time

"All my possessions for a moment of time." Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603)

It is hard to find time to write. It is even harder when you have children. As I write this, I am still in my pajamas, my hair is all cattywampus, and my son is destroying my house (and I'm fairly certain he has reprogrammed the VCR in a way I may never undo). This is the price I pay for a moment to write. Time is expensive and precious. It can only be spent once and is not something one can earn more of. There is no time lottery. No bank of time. There is just time...

And now, there is quiet...and with a child in the house who is awake, quiet is never a good sign.

Coexistance

I watch him slowly dissect my office,
sitting on the floor,
a pile of my books around him,
the bottom two shelves now empty--
Virginia Woolf and A Guide To Composition Pedagogy,
reference manuals and ironically
The Discipline Book.

He looks at the picture of the author in the back and
cheerfully calls out “Daddy”.

Every man is daddy today,
as they were yesterday
and the days before.

He wears pajamas and it is almost noon;
cartoons play quietly in the background,
and peaches are warming in their own juice on the counter.

I used to stop him
but this is precious time for us both,
nothing broken that matters,
nothing ruined that can’t be acceptably reconstructed.

He babbles incoherently to himself,
a contented architect
building and destroying
what I will rearrange while he dreams.

The rythym of our day is marked in messes
abstract art on the living room floor;

and somehow, we create in harmony
his small words spoken
seep into mine written.

A simple dance.

There is a poem hiding in the drier,
a word or two in the dishwasher.

Maybe I will find them
tomorrow

as I have been interrupted
by silence.