Of Woman-wonderment

Victoria laughed as she observed my scribbles, Oh, that's right,' she surmised, 'there's no back-space button on a pen!' I laughed back and told her when you get to my age you have to write fast because  train of thought can derail in an instant! ...oh, I love that girl teetering on the brink of childhood softly slipping... 

*When I was a child

I thought as a child,

I spoke as a child,

I reasoned as a child,

But when I became a woman

I put away childish things

Yet, now and then I covet

Un-obliterated wings

And wish that I was wonder-awed

By joy’s simplicity

Of snow-flake serenading sod

In spangled ecstasy

Where moments are not measuring spoons

That soon we reminisce

But simply the soft, startling swoon

Of wonder’s present-bliss

And from my laundry-room of thought

Bent old by worry’s woe

I wonder, is life’s wonder sought

Or found by letting go?

My woman-hands, worn by demands

Of woman’s sacred ‘must’

Have somehow rendered youth’s romance

To life’s white-knuckled trust

And I recall those ‘childish things’

With envious restraint

For blessing of a ‘woman’s wings’

Cannot afford complaint

But still, the vantage-point of youth

Smothered by subtle sighs

Or tainted by time’s turbid truth

Of hellos and goodbyes

Stirs echoes of a by-gone age

A daily wonder-land

Of squishing ‘cross spring’s mud-warm page

Or summer’s castle-sand

Of unadulterated hope

Wild as the autumn wind

Or silver haloing the slope

Of summer left behind…

Then I look up

Ah, there it is

Curled leaf left on a limb

Etched in a song of mercy’s kiss

Melting the midnight scrim

The crumpled sock within my clutch

Is Heaven’s happy proof

A tangible and tender touch

Of children ‘neath my roof

Their laughter fills kitchen-sink grail

Suds bubble contentment

Where dirty dishes tell the tale

Of sweet suppertime spent

Yes, I have left life’s ‘childish things’

Of virgin enchantment

To rise up on the wiser wings

Of woman-wonderment

© Janet Martin

* found in 1 Cor. 13.