"Children run through and make faces at me"...Another Rumi Poem

I sometimes remember this poem when I consider the ways that being a parent has changed my daily life, and my daily prayer!


I used to be shy.
You made me sing.

I used to refuse things at table.
Now I shout for more wine.

In somber dignity, I used to sit
on my mat and pray.

Now children run through
and make faces at me.


Coleman Barks comments: "In China they tell of three laughing Taoist masters, who taught by going into town and standing in the marketplace and laughing. One of them died. People curious as to how the remaining two would act gathered at the funeral pyre. The other two masters had been given instructions not to prepare the body in any way, not even to change the clothes the dead man was wearing. He had crammed his pockets full of firecrackers. The teaching began again. Rumi's poems are like firecrackers on a funeral pyre. They won't allow much public posturing, and they point us away from misery."

(Coleman Barks with John Moyne, translators, The Essential Rumi, San Francsico, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995: p. 238)

Having Children, A Poem By Barbara Tanner Angell

I am spending the summer caring for my children each day while my wife is working on a Master's degree. I have traveled up and down the East Coast with them a few times, putting nearly 3000 miles on the car, and on us. My wife calls them (and me), "precious cargo" so she tells me to be careful; which I am. I love my kids deeply, and I strive to make my love and my caring for them active verbs and not just feelings in my heart.

The task of caring for them, watching them, feeding them, changing their diapers, playing with them, creating with them, disciplining them is a large task. Also, it is something that is, at times, a heavy weight to be "on" with them for many hours of the day (and night), but it is a glorious weight, a burden that is also light because of the love I feel for them.

It is the most difficult thing I have ever done, akin to triple session practices (that is, three practices in one day over the course of a week or more) when I played soccer and lacrosse in high school and college but even those practices did not extend into the nightime, and we didn't have to change any diapers! But this "toughest job I'll ever love" is a blessing!

This poem was on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac today, entitled "Having Children," by Barbara Tanner Angell; it spoke to me about the deeply emotional side of caring for, and about children.


...enjoy....

(from the Writer's Almanac webpage....)

WEDNESDAY, 18 JULY, 2007
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen

Poem: "Having Children" by Barbara Tanner Angell, from The Long Turn Toward Light. © Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Having Children

A siren goes by,
the scream cuts through me
even though my child is home.
For a moment I think...

Where am I?
In the middle of the night
a cry, dreamed
or heard, a wave washes
over the body of my child.
I have let her drown

or fall. She has fallen
from a high balcony
and I have let it happen.
Negligence. I feel
as if I'm plummeting...

Oh let this be a dream.
I'll be better next time.
I'll watch, I'll watch, I'll watch.