For several weeks before Elise was born, I had been writing her short letters, and compiling them in a book for her to have when she is old enough to appreciate it. This one is a response to the Sunday Scribblings post from a few weeks, ago, “Mantra”.

Letters to Elise

June 12, 2010

XV. Don’t Postpone Joy
(“Mantra” – SundayScribblings.blogspot.com)

Your great aunt,
for whom you were named,
my beloved daisy,
adjured us daily
by her actions and her smile:
Don’t postpone joy.

And so I pass on to you
this wisdom,
and will show you every day:
Don’t postpone joy.

There is joy in everything,
if you just look, expecting to find.
Not that we close our eyes
to suffering and sorrow,
but that even there, we search
for the joy.

In response to Until I Can by my beautiful, and very pregnant, Beloved. (Go read that first.)

Until you can, and thereafter

May 27, 2010

I’ve gotten used to him
unfinished
with his hat labeled “Brown” and  “Dark Brown” in pencil.
I think of myself that way, sometimes,
wearing a hat marked to fill in later,
and a face contently hiding in the shadows
beneath the broad brown-not-brown brim.

Is he asleep?
He smiles enigmatically,
dares you to guess.

I’m sure you’ll finish some day,
but until you can,
I kind of like him this way.

And, even when you can,
I think this is how I’ll remember him.

Safe

April 29, 2010

I wonder if Dad was ever as frightened
driving along the escarpment at night
as I am now, the road almost invisible,
far more treacherous than the roller coasters
we spent the day riding.

We slept quietly in the back
of a green Kombie, inches from the edge
of the Great Rift, avoiding car-swallowing
potholes and juggernaut lorries
barreling by with no headlights.

And my boy sleeps in the back
as the rain sweeps the lines
from the road, and the wind snatches
the Wrangler, tries to fling it
into the oncoming traffic.

A father’s job is
to scream like a girl on the Drop Tower,
but endure the monsoon
with quiet dignity.

This morning, there was another so-called aftershock in Haiti. Any other time, it would be called a big earthquake. 6.1 is hardly an aftershock, but more of the main event. More buildings are down, the internet is out again, and it will be a while before we know what additional damage was done.

My sister and her kids are here in the US, and her husband is still at Quisqueya, helping run a field hospital and orphanage. The kids are in school, and generous friends and strangers have provided everything for them, from clothes to a place to sit at the lunchroom tables with friendly faces. Meanwhile, their dad, and many of their friends, are still in danger, and far away.

I’m feeling very sad this morning – sad for my sister and her scattered family, sad for the enormity of suffering of a people who have known little else, sad for the children who are wounded and hungry and frightened and lonely this morning in Haiti.

I wrote this poem over the last few days, after watching Ruth’s kids and my kids playing, as though everything was no different from last summer. Right after I got done with it this morning, I found out about the new quake.

If you’ve been thinking about giving something to help folks in Haiti, but had let it slide by because it’s not in the headlines any more, please consider giving to the Red Cross, or Doctors Without Borders, as they continue to alleviate the suffering of people who are utterly without resources.

Earthquake Evacuees

January 20, 2010

The boys are comparing loose teeth
The girls are somewhere
talking American Girls and shoes.

This week, they get to worry about
small things, like why
white people are driving the buses,
and why the electricity is on
all day every day,
and why nobody has walls around their houses

instead of when the ground will shake again
and why they have to sleep outside
and why so many people are laying so quietly
in front of their Escheresque homes.