I promised to lighten it up a little bit.
My mother used to disappear when we
were children out somewhere two or three minutes
and we'd run around looking for her.
And then I realized, when I became a mother
and I can see it now with my daughter
as she is now a mother, that sometimes you
just need to get away from those kids just for a second.
She would go out in the garage.
Her mother went out behind the garage.
And this poem is about that.
"Day Star."
She wanted a little room for thinking,
but she saw diapers steaming on the line, a doll slumped
behind the door.
So she loved the chair behind the garage
to sit out the children's naps.
Sometimes there were things to watch--
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket, a floating maple leaf.
Other days she stared until she was
assured when she closed her eyes she'd
see only her own vivid blood.
She had an hour at best before Liza appeared pouting
from the top of the stairs.
And just what was mother doing out back with the field mice?
Why building a palace.
Later that night, when Thomas rolled over and lurched
into her, she would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour where she was nothing, pure nothing
in the middle of the day.
We've all been there, right?
We know that place.