Home again, home again, jiggety jig

I’m exhausted. Six days in Orlando on our BIG family vacation — an average of about 94 degrees (plus humidity!) and 4 days of theme parks — and this mom is tapped out.

What has sustained me is getting up in the morning before my daughters to read Ruth Stone’s poetry. Reading her poetry in Ordinary Words (the only poetry book I brought), and writing in my journal…

So here’s a sustaining poem for you, courtesy of The Poetry Foundation. 

The Mother

BY RUTH STONE

Here where the rooms are dryly still
Who is this dustily asleep
While juicy children run the field?

Where is her ever deepening well
Whose buckets to a fullness dip
For needs compassion must fulfill?

Like freshets they themselves may yield
A little to the turned up cup,
But death is in the long dry spell.

Run children, run, the light grows dull,
And she who keeps the well must sleep,
And rain is unpredictable.

December 1951

Source: Poetry (June 2012).

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