lovely poem

I found it in a "Mothering" magazine...




Picasso


Picasso,
did you ever have to go suddenly
and clean up an overflowing drain
when caught between two images?
or find a square root for solving
thrust under your nose
when you were trying to find the roots of the world?


Some men would say I don't know reality,
But it is my reality to wait
like so many women,
and not rush, childlike,
to find that glory rhymes with bitterness.


I don't believe your jagged, searching lines
were ever interrupted with cries of babies,
wars perhaps,
but not the small domestic insistencies


But then I have no wish
to be stuck high up on walls,
my patterns caught,
dissected there by critics.
I like to think my thoughts are shaken out in dusters,
are blowing in long lines of washing,
are caught in the smell of fresh cooking,
and lay perhaps in the minds of my children.



by Pam Redmond