Instead, it began with
a different tree, someone else's,
grafted onto ours.

And not with spreadsheet cells,
rising and falling temperatures
of ovulating emptiness.

When we wept, the torrents
smeared every last one of
the Kodachrome intercessions we had.

Our calendar of family-building
desires, a cathedral full of votives
snuffed out by the wind.

Don't worry, if you can't have
a baby, my grade-school daughter said
to a stranger after Quaker meeting.

My parents bought us.
Oh darling, we longed, pleaded, begged
the universe for you and your sister to come.

All the entreaties were resolved in a different
dialect than expected. With utter steadfastness—
the tortoise victorious again.

Love wins, they say. And it does. But
parenting can also feel like swallowing shimmering
glass sometimes, on a dark Monday afternoon.

This tree still sways in the fierce wind.
Still stands tall and strong, reaches always
for more, whispering with the moon and stars.

The older I get, the more I’m conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn’t it?

— Sandra Cisneros

she said make it big, smash the system.
She was as impatient as a puppy
waiting to get outside to pee. I thought
she wanted bulldozers and hard hats now.

Change was the fun aunt my daughters
admired who bought them lingerie
when I was still gifting craft kits.
At the march to protest the Iraq war,
all three were furious, inconsolable.

But where are the people
we will stop from fighting?
my young daughters said.
When will you frickin’ DO
something? Change exploded.

And I thought she meant
PROTESTS, HUNGER STRIKES,
BOYCOTTS, CIVIL UNREST.
But lately I see her in her sweatpants
cleaning the toilet, cleansing the sink.

I used to see her with a megaphone
on the nightly news in my youth.
Now, she talks to her neighbors,
weeds the garden, speaks the unsayable,
and sings with a quiet force: really show
up, do the work, fall down, get back up.

The majestic maple’s
changing colours
shout look at me
in a way that makes it
impossible not to grin
even as some docile
despair gathers,
like old socks,
around the ankles.

Where the house meets
the dirt, some wriggling
red worms line up
in the dappled yellow
of a new day.
This abode holds
what matters most
and ignores the barking
coming from the side yard.

Wayward joy contains
the realness of things,
but holds the kindling
lightly so oxygen can
whisper to the flame
resist — be stubborn
in your gladness.
The wind throws a fit,
but this domicile stands.

In the before now,
this home was enveloped
by clouded uncertainty.
Even when the sky sang
the lapis of a lagoon,
the discordant melody fell flat,
tumbled in one ear,
out through the lungs.
But today, this dwelling shines.

In childhood, mirth and misery
appeared as angry antonyms
on the playground and on Looney Tunes.
But they’ve always lived in the
same house, just different floors.
Even when life sings a sorrowful
song, don’t be confused.
Turn on the lights and
study delight. Do this.