I Can Feed Myself Grapes

a poem

Photo by Chris Yang on Unsplash

I Can Feed Myself Grapes

No poems today, just the work.
The work that makes the poems
sneaky, run-on rebels, written in
the margins of a math textbook.

If all I had time for was poetry,
then the writing would be like
someone force-feeding me grapes.

I can feed myself grapes.

And I can find little snippets of
time, stolen or borrowed, to etch
and shift this ache into words;
this ache of joy, at seeing life
come up from frozen ground,
and my little girl wipe the dirt
off her face, just so she can see
clearly enough to keep digging.

We are building a bug paradise
in the bottom of an old piece
of tupperware.

Do you remember the last time
you played in the mud?

Me neither.

But lately I am thawing out, letting
the cool, drippy water of winter
evaporate, and scribbling poetry on
church bulletins, in the middle of
conversations, and on my cell phone’s
“notepad.” I often tell my toddler,
“Hold on, baby, I need to write that down,”
and she pauses, with eyebrows raised,
because she knows

that her Mom is nuts.

The world has been very cold lately,
and people pull further inside themselves,
shouting, shouting, and still lonely.
But today, there was only one pile of
snow left in the Walmart parking lot,
piled high, covered in black asphalt crumbs.

I believe there is hope because of
the existence of spring.

If life can resurrect each year, then
surely we can take a minute to breathe,
relax our shoulders, and remind ourselves
that Jesus holds all things together by
the power of his word.

We can reach into the soft earth, dripping
with potential, and shape it into something
miraculous, like a pizza or a piece of chocolate
cake, served on a plastic plate covered in daisies.

I know that it is so very hard to be human,
but the Son of God also knows.

Don’t forget that.

And, knowing this, He took time to cook
breakfast over a charcoal fire on the beach.

Don’t forget that either.