The Patio Maidens
The little one in the nursing
felt poorly; knew what scared was
scarred was; it didn't
feel good and nursing
mattered… it's
mattering now.
Nursing for the home
at any stage
where is that
other side?
Several weeks ago a
quail of Artemis laid an egg
in my geranium pot on the
patio and something like a stone
began rolling away beneath me.
Next day she lay
and laid another and then another
and the next and the next
till finally on the seventh day
she rested.
Meanwhile
Aphrodite's dove in haste
built a scanty shanty
in another corner of my patio
on the backside of a
potted cactus living atop
the bookshelf where
I have no book left unread
and a seashell
where still I sit sometimes
and dream...
I was lighting the grill
and got the salmon
half-way done when she came
and lay laying two eggs
then left again.
I water the geranium
from the underside now
putting an oversized
iron skillet with a
flat bottom underneath the pot
which, by the way
I had to set atop a chimenea
to keep javelina from eating its
blossoms the night before. Indeed,
some ways of nursing seem odd…
yet, the little ones in the nursing
have me by the heart and I
feel like I'm all the way back
to where I come from. Something
holy has come over me;
I am fierce about life again
which has started something else
laughing
Picture it! The eggs got laid
one by one in a frying pan
to incubate and hatch
while I must water the frying pan
to feed what fires the geranium
and all this sits atop a curvy
chimenea where Hestia
apparently and presently
keeps safely life's eternal flame
tending this fire by keeping up dis
appearances; nursing for the home
(at any stage) in deed
is unseemingly odd. Yet, presently
and even though
they will come and go
these little ones in the nursing
have made it feel like home to me
again. In your nursing…
make it feel like that.
©2010 stephanie pope mythopoetry.com
First publication mythopoetry.com May, 2005
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