Feb 16, 2014 Parenting/ Home-schooling / Family Music and other Notes, Reading, Writing, Thinking

Post-Sled Languor
©2014, Vijaya Sundaram
February 16th, 2014

On my back, near my child,
Who is intent on packing snow,
I feel the rush of the earth
On her axis,
A spinning ballerina
En pointe.

Snow quiets someone’s heartbeat
(Mine? My daughter’s? The earth’s?)
Traffic rushes by, while I
Lie, staring at a pale sky,
With its light flurry of clouds.

And across my field of vision
Blank as I am, quiet as I am,
(But not quiet like death, not quite).
Slices an arrow, shot from an
Unseen bow, bent on its
Unknown goal, and the sky divides.

Silver, the airplane shoots across,
And I watch, blank as snow,
As the earth spins.

A flurry of thoughts
Moves across my mind,
I think (how could I not?)
Of the bow from which I
Was shot, and the end to which
I am headed, unknowing,
(for how can the arrow know, completely?).

But even that thought dies away,
As I lie on my back,
In the snow, gazing blankly
At a pale, pale, darkening sky,
While near me, my daughter
Makes a snow-fort.

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Tags: #Mother and Daughter, #Original Poetry, arrows, destinations, earth's axis, looking up at the sky, post-sledding, snow-fort