The Transit of Venus
An alternate galaxy behind your bolted bedroom door
golden moons and stars, texture the blue night walls
into blue days
Discarded toys in corners, puppets hang forlorn at angles
shadows of more innocent times before
hormones and EMINEM
lose yourself, the music the moment the music the moment
Your body changing against your will
storing secrets and swinging moods
that flash like cosmic storms
Entombed with a pyramid of clothes, shoes, angst
curtains clenched, cocooned from light
and the gravity of adult life
“My patience, resolutions and beliefs are tested to the limits – sometimes daily.”*
Right at this moment one of my challenges is the constant, tuneless whistling from my elder son. When my boys were babies it was getting them to sleep or trying to figure out why they were crying. On any given day now, it might be squabbling, fighting, teasing, screaming, shouting or rudeness. Who’d be a parent? We might well question ourselves after the event, but we can’t very well put them back! Just how we find those inner resources, how we constantly demand more of ourselves, how we keep marching up that hill with a smile on our face and gladness in our heart at the sight of our ‘babies’ is one of life’s mysteries.
* © from Being Mummy by Anne‑marie Taplin published April 2007