Well Seasoned

Well Seasoned

(“Jesus said to him, ‘If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.’” Mark 9:23)

I had hoped to be well-seasoned by now,
a cast-iron skillet passed down from each generation.
Instead I watch the robins arrive and notice them for the
second time
out my back window days before Spring.
They know nothing of my, nor describe my fashions.
But they, attired in their puffy red shirts, skip across the
hill behind my house…as they have done each Spring despite
absent eyes full of seeing.

They did not ask my permission, nor was it required. They
are not an intrusion, they are not a new obsession; but I started
looking for them this year
before they arrived.

I had hoped to be well-reasoned by now,
a vast basin of academia attested by my decorations.
Instead I muddle; my arguments are more subtle,
and my conclusions less sharp than last I was tested.
My interest in prooftexts has abated.

I’ll take that second glass of wine now.

No, I do not have a boy thrown into the water and the fire;
no demons, no foaming, no froth and no briar,
my anxieties lie much deeper and higher.

I am pregnant with something that will not be born,
my chest heaves with leaden air and my mind reboots the
assumptions I placed each bet upon.
The gestation is decades and will not be stillborn but
my fear is
it will not be born at all.

I do not have a boy thrown into water or fire,
but the robins return and I ask where I fit
after their nests are built, the blue eggs crack
and I sit on the same couch from which
I watched them arrive.

I had hoped to be well-pleasing by now,
a scholar in my field, a golden apple from the tree.
Tomorrow may tell; tonight the daffodils
will push through the clods like butter and I

Will wonder how to love You better since the
seasons are shortening and my longings are unborn.