Most mornings when I have "morning report" duty, I drive. The silver lining is a chance to listen to NPR. In the past, I've found Garrison Keillor a bit annoying, but this week I've really enjoyed the Writer's Almanac installment. That for June 5 was especially good, so copying the poem, "Possibilities" by Linda Pastan below. I find especially poignant the lines about growing larger and then smaller -- with three little ones, I know they'll get bigger and then we'll have a time when we're back down to two, but how things will change during that process cannot be foretold. Does waking up so early in the morning always make one so reflective?
Possibilities
Today I drove past a house
we almost bought and heard
through the open window music
made by some other family.
We don't make music ourselves, in fact
we define our differences
by what we listen to.
And what we mean by family
has changed since then
as we grew larger then smaller again
in ways we knew would happen
and yet didn't expect.
Each choice is a winnowing,
and sometimes at night I hear
all the possibilities creak open
and shut like screendoors
in the wind,
making an almost musical
accompaniment
to what I know
of love and history.
we almost bought and heard
through the open window music
made by some other family.
We don't make music ourselves, in fact
we define our differences
by what we listen to.
And what we mean by family
has changed since then
as we grew larger then smaller again
in ways we knew would happen
and yet didn't expect.
Each choice is a winnowing,
and sometimes at night I hear
all the possibilities creak open
and shut like screendoors
in the wind,
making an almost musical
accompaniment
to what I know
of love and history.
No comments:
Post a Comment