Yarrow House

Resting in the Eddies

                           — for Carol and Bill
She built pots as fragile as seashells,
curved against time and as demanding,
and all the while she plunged through torrents,
through rapids, a maelstrom of wounds and scars,
creating beauty from the frozen pain.

He carved trails and built paths through
their five-acre woods, circling the mossy stones
and stumps, to open clearings in the undergrowth
for a view into the forest’s green mystery, trying
to lead himself out of the labyrinth of their life together.

They built a house, a family, some kind
of life they continued to struggle against,
living in their own rooms, hunting 
for themselves, alone, they followed
separate paths that returned again and again

to the hearth, to the table, and even sometimes
to the bed where they made themselves new in each other,
if only for the night found the center,
while their children spun off into their own
leaving the two of them alone at last together.

These days he kayaks, to test himself
against white water, against rocky river teeth,
glory and freedom in the singular moment.
Sometimes he rests in the eddies, while he eyes out
the next foamy path between boulders.

These days she leads wounded children
through the maze of their pain, out
to the clearings where they can grow.
Her life eddies and surges between terror and grace,
curved against time and as demanding.

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Onetime reproduction for non-resale purposes permitted by the author with the following credit line: by J Yarrow