Complaint

“Is that a spider’s trapeze swaying from the ceiling?” (Photo by Violet Nesdoly)

COMPLAINT

Women’s work is never done…
The burner rings are caked with overflow.
Is there anything to eat?
Mom, there are no clean socks.

The burner rings are caked with overflow.
Is that a spider’s trapeze swaying from the ceiling?
Mom, there are no clean socks, and
We’re running out of milk.

Is that a spider’s trapeze swaying from the ceiling?
Please drive me to the mall, you said
We’re running out of milk.
I fell. It’s bleeding!

Please drive me to the mall. Oh no,
You forgot to load the dishwasher.
I fell. It’s bleeding!
Does this fridge smell?

Who forgot to run the dishwasher?
I think I paid that bill.
This fridge does smell.
I’d swear there’s something sticky on the floor.

I know I paid that bill.
Vacuum and dust, Company’s coming!
Mop up that something sticky on the floor.
These library books are due.

Vacuum and dust! Company’s coming –
Is there anything to eat?
These library books are overdue …
Women’s work is never done!

© Violet Nesdoly

*****************

I see that today our Poetry Friday hostess is sharing a pantoum she wrote as part of a seven-pantoum challenge! What fun.

I love pantoums. That’s the form of the poem, above. The first one I ever read was “Julian at Ten” by Nelson Bentley. It was in the book Writing Personal Poetry (by Sheila Bender), and I was mesmerized. How did he do that—get that back-and-forth, swaying, sashaying sensation with words?

I tried my hand at writing one soon after. “Complaint” is probably the second one I wrote, written  some years ago now. I think I was already out of the thick of those mother-always-on-call years but they were still fresh in my mind.

This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Laura Purdie Salas at Writing the world for kids.

 

I sit in a circle of women …

My mother with her newborn granddaughter, my daughter

 

BABY SHOWER

I sit in a circle of women,
exclaiming over sleepers, booties and bibs,
careful not to startle
the porcelain doll –
soft unaccustomed weight in my arms.
I glimpse, across the circle, my baby
almost 17 and beautiful
laughing with her friends.

© 2004 by V. Nesdoly

****************

Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughter! Just before she was born, my husband got a Bible promise for her life from Luke 1:14—the angel’s words to Zechariah about John: “(S)he will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his (her) birth” (NIV).  That has proven true over and over!

I well remember becoming a mom for the first time (she was my firstborn). What an experience—an initiation into a season of life which never ends. Once a mom, always a mom, and I love being a mother and now a grandmother.

I wrote the poem above around the year 2000. It was first published in my 2004 chapbook Calendar.