Every year when my daughter and I hike up to the top of a mountain in Big Sur, we spend time there, yogaing, laughing, laying on our backs and looking at the sky. We talk and play with the dog. We have a picnic and are just us under a sheltering sky.
Every year since I have been going to Big Sur in February, I have written a poem. It may sound strange but it just comes to me: the urge to write the poem, the words of the poem and it just kind of happens...
I am not particularly proseful or poetic. I just feel compelled every year at this time and the words just come. I don’t know if they are “good” poems or not. But I like them. They seem to encapsulate the poignancy of the moment I am living. It is nice to go back and review. A poem a year is not a great literary feat but it is my contribution.
Here is this year’s addition:
This year is different.
She is different.
I am different.
The planet.
Different
The change of different immense
The world was a different world
We were different people.
Not better
Not worse
Just very different
Impossible for me to say which I prefer
What combination of us would be preferable to the us of now.
Her then
Me now
Me then
Her some other variation
She still hates hiking.
Yet we return to the mountain again
Year after year
A pilgrimage to mother-daughterhood
One leading.
One following.
Me never being really sure whose is leading, who is following...
We find ourselves again in older skin and different bodies.
Hers moving toward life
Mine moving closer to death
I feel the gap more this year.
Between her and me.
The gap wider this time
feels less bridgeable than years past
Is she gone to the teenage years where I am not a confidant, not a friend?
Is it permanent or just a phase?
Time will tell I suppose.
Different sameness.
The love I feel for her is truly all that remains of who we were.
New skin.
New flesh.
New eyes.
So much of us everywhere
I write, while she climbs a tree
She still climbs trees
So the little girl I’ve raised is still in there somewhere...
Please God, keep her alive and well for all the days of her life
May that life be long and happy
Never let her lose the quest for knowledge in life
that can only be found whilst climbing a tree.
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