Category — Poetry

At Jen’s request, I’m sharing another pregnancy poem. Much less funny but just as honest, I hope:

You, my child.

My darling child,
your hands, as webs,
reach out to touch my insides.
“Mommy, I am here.”
You knit my womb and heart
together with strings.
Your smile already my companion.

My angel,
you speak to me through your
rumblings,
coursing blood, water, tears
out from my fingertips.
I imagine your steps,
giant, small
and wonder at your nature.

I crawl, small, into my Father’s hands,
whispering thanks,
gasping for all the Love
in the world there is to give,
because you deserve it
my darling.

I imagine your face wrinkled, calm.
swimming through your
childhood, already begun.
I marvel at your daring heart,
already,
wishing nothing but hope and
promise and life -
lovely things, lovely things
for you.

You wake now, with passion
stirring like earth quakes,
as I pray.
your voice calling out
“amens”.
I can hear you saying your
yeses. saying yes to the world.

“Yes world, I am coming.”
 
i love you.  
- mama

The innie remains an innie (so far) although I am encountering depths of my belly button I’ve never seen before, my feet are swollen beyond belief, and I officially stopped wearing my wedding band as of yesterday when my mother-in-law had to wrench the piece of metal over my knuckle with dish soap and a lever made of dental floss. 

On the pregnancy note, I bring you this poem (of sorts) written in month three:

I am eating convulsively, though I find it repulsive.
It’s all I can do to sleep.
My boobs keep growing
and my nipples are SO sensitive
I scream in the shower
cowering in the corner –
hiding my chest away from
the faucet.

Yes. I am pregnant.

Calling all poets: a poetry competition from our friends at Comment magazine.

Comment magazine (www.cardus.ca/comment) invites poets to submit contributions in the form of a rondeau suitable for publication in our September print issue. This will be our fourth annual “Making the Most of College” issue, and the submitted poems should in some way be connected with that theme, or with the beginning of the school year. Our poetry judges will select three of the submitted rondeaux for publication and offer pre-publication editorial advice to the poets. One of the selected rondeaux will be published on the first page of the September issue, and its poet awarded a prize of CDN $50. Two other winners will be published elsewhere in the magazine. Email submissions or questions to dpostma@cardus.ca by June 15, 2009.

K-os says it best: http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/videos.html?id=1130063130 (I encourage you to watch the entire interview.) 

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For the past number of weeks I have been questioning my own honesty. Asking the question, what is my first responsibility: to be real or to be understood? 

I am a believer that “the Truth shall set you free.” (John 8:32) While this verse from the Bible is speaking of Jesus, I also believe it is speaking of every truth — every bit of honesty.

The truth shall set us free. 

Honesty / truthfulness are our first responsibility: to ourselves, to each other and to God. Nothing else will do. 

To k-os, an artist I have long loved and admired, honesty is the best poetry. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Seawall, December 20, 2008 (my last walk before heading east)

The last three years have been spiritually abysmal. You may not have seen it, or maybe it was plain as day, either way I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. 

The devastated dreams of a career within the CBC coupled by my mom’s year-long graze with death by cancer spun this once confident faithful into a pit of despair. It came slowly. Unknowingly. I’ve been crawling through a long season of why-asking while my Lord’s voice, once my closest confidante, has lay dormant.

Nearly a year ago I began seeing a counselor — a lifeline in what had come to be an emotionally and spiritually void existence. I got married amidst that void and by God’s grace Michael’s and my love has grown, slowly, in spite of it.

It has, and continues to be a slow journey - a pilgrimage to wholeness. The wholeness of being. Of being daughter fully known and loved by parents fractured by painful childhoods and eventual divorce. It has been a journey restoring trust in a God I had seen as the divider and stealer of relationship, friendship and love — my ever-present scapegoat. It has been a journey to let go, to unhinge the steel doors around my heart, to name the wounds, to name the wounders and choose forgiveness, healing, hope.

Hope is my word for this year. Hope. She is a new friend. She is filled with longing and beauty. She is searcher, wonderer, and wanderer. She seeks good, and expects it. I love my new friend. I’d love for you to meet. Perhaps you know her, if so you should introduce her to a friend. 

This journey has been filled with hundreds of little breakthroughs, dozens of wrenching sobs and a handful of glimmering pictures of what is to be, what our Father intends for you, for me…

My prayer for you is that 2009 is a beginning.

Michael and I have stolen away to Bowen Island to house-sit for a couple of weeks.

Our friends, the Cowpers, are away in Africa — first landing in Swaziland to tour Bulembu (an incredible self-sustaining community founded by Vancouver’s Volker Wagner, and led, in large part, by our good friend Jamie Woller. We just had the opportunity to visit with Jamie over a few days, at the To Change the World Emerging Leaders Summit, presented by Cardus, in Ottawa.) Then the Cowpers travel to South Africa and, finally Namibia.

People ask us why we’re here on the island, (it’s definitely not convenient.) But really nothing can capture our sentiments other than experience (right, Avital? right, Jenn?)

Waking to waves washing up on the shoreline, staring through forested hills as I wile away at the computer, ending our days by candlelight — well, those are a few of the reasons, for sure.

Here’s the view from dinner Monday night:

Do you see what I mean? ;)

Also, as a writer, I find new places and experiences inspiring. Travel, for me, is renewing. These experiences give new breadth to my work, spurring ideas, poems, articles, that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. For some, this is hard to understand, but for me, it is a way of life.

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Tomorrow I will post a Bowen poem. They’ve been spilling out since we arrived Sunday. The first of many, I hope.