Confined

Life is an unpredictable sort of thing.  This can be difficult for me because I am by nature a planner.  I make daily lists and agendas.  When my expected course of a day is destroyed I sometimes stand like a deer in headlights paralyzed by the unknown approaching.  But, I am learning (maybe that is the point of the unending stream of unexpected events that keep arising) that life simply will not conform to my plans much of the time, particularly in the primary work I have chosen right now – mothering.  Turns out I will spend today trying to balance tending a sick child with writing and housekeeping.  Since I spent a large part of the night awake and stroking my uncomfortable child I must do it on a half-awake brain.  My tired self is neither my most patient nor resourceful.  I struggle not to feel confined because one of my children is home sick.      

 Dictionary.com offers the following definition for the adjective confined.
1.  limited or restricted
2.  unable to leave a place because of illness, imprisonment, etc.
3.  being in childbirth; being in parturition (the process of bringing forth young)

I could not repress a smirky smile at the irony of typing the third entry from the above definition!  I had forgotten that meaning of confined.  How appropriate for my musings today.

Equally appropriate I suppose is the desire for things to move in an orderly way according to plans.  Schedules make work and school days progress effectively for large numbers of people.  I am too spacey to give up the lists altogether.  They really do help me.  But, perhaps I could consider if my lists are what sometimes keep me confined?    I am acutely aware that my day of cancelled plans is nothing like evacuating for a hurricane or, worse yet, recovering from its destruction as so many residents of the eastern United States have this week. 

My deliberation then for this day may be about keeping my Aries head up and looking instead of lowered and ramming my horns into the day trying to keep the goals as the steadying force when the healthy rearing of my family is my central, overriding ambition.

Her, Ram Child

Run, ram child in your fence feeling mowed
clover lying limp under foot
scenting the air green and pink
pillow clouds make pictures you imagine but
cannot breath.

Pray, ram child that your pickets parading right
angled edges abruptly turn
changing the path, dirt clods and rock
rambling hills hide other sides stillness thinks
might be greener.

See, ram child in a pasture perfect postcard
pictures mate and offspring, food
and stream calling home to what is
expected, projected safe and known with
restful heart.

Relax, ram child while shears shape you to
your skin see yourself as more than
just free to go because a fulfilled ewe
gave people in your meadow wool to keep
them warm.