Stolen from The Heart

Stolen From the Heart

All my art, is stolen 

from the clutches of my motherhood.

Poems scribbled on napkins, 

and drawings traced on the backs 

of my babies as they stumble 

towards sleep. 

Whatever births, 

had better be quick, 

hot and fast.

No presence residing to revise 

and to intricately labour.

Just the raw pouring forth, 

before I'm enveloped again 

by the detritus of my service.

All my poems are stolen 

from the mouths of my babes.

So excruciating at times 

to feel Her rise,

the Queen of my creativity,

suddenly there in the kitchen

amidst the breakfast dishes,

emerging inexplicably from the dregs 

of my servitude, 

an unexpected grace 

that I barely have room for. 

I scramble for a pen 

and a spare piece of paper 

to offer her.

There's some space on the back 

of a shopping list, 

and a child's dirty crayon. 

I clear a space on the cluttered table, 

and wipe away the toast crumbs 

from the chair, 

I ask her to sit down 

but tell her she'll have to be quick 

because we have to hang out the washing

before dressing the kids.

All my art is squeezed 

through the eye of a needle.

The gravity of the couch 

with the tangled limbs 

of my no longer babies, 

the fierce, sticky love, 

is never quite what you bargained for 

and sometimes it feels as though 

you gave up too much 

for the privilege of peace-keeping

between siblings 

and the trimming of dirty fingernails. 

But other times, 

that same grace descends,

from the blue,

as you watch your boy, 

your shining sun, 

hurtle down the hill towards you, 

golden and grubby 

and you understand that motherhood 

is its own art, 

and the humans grown 

each a rugged masterpiece, 

and all the poems lost, 

for lack of time, 

and all the paintings unrealized 

for arms too full to hold another thing,

but the wood 

and the dishes 

and the washing,

have somehow woven their way 

into the fibers of the future, 

in these wild and wayward beings, 

who love and fight so fiercely 

and with such chaotic abandon. 

I hear threads of thematic resonance

between all the songs I never wrote 

and my 6 year old daughters 

glorious abandon 

to improvised soliloquies.

There is the stolen thrill 

of being let in so close 

to the pristine magnificence 

of a daughter grown,

the exquisite softness of her

in the cusps of my hands.

All my art, 

flows through the great canyon lands 

of my heart, 

carved with the tears and the blood 

and the sweat of my motherhood, 

the great ask of this love 

to make of myself something 

and nothing, all at once.

I am learning to see, 

what my world may deny, 

that all life is an act of art-making,

of love-making, 

and not the least of which, 

is the crafting of a heart 

that can map the terrain of a love 

so mind boggling vast and mundane.

All the tiny acts, 

the minute strokes that build the world, 

that paint a picture, 

that write a poem, 

that tend to the wayward tangles 

in the wild mane 

of our Earth's future custodians, 

each an act of labour, 

each an act of love.

And I wonder how it might be different 

if I were to reframe

my perception.

That rather than being 

the artist I am

despite my children,

I am the artist I am

because of them.

Because all my art, 

including my motherhood, 

is stolen from the heart,

as a prayer 

of love

to the future

unknown.

Text and image © Lucy Pierce 2017