.

Missed Call

O Muse, would you call back another time?
My little boy, armed with a sharpened stick,
winged with a blanket, sure that he can fly,
is leaping off the countertop to try
things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
Poems are slow to grow, but kids are quick.

I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch, O Muse.
My little girl insists I braid her hair.
I weave the golden strands, then I unweave,
pushing away the day when she’ll refuse
my help, put in the braids herself, and leave.
That day, O Muse, I may have time to spare.

I haven’t even looked at all those lines
you sent me, much less worked them into rhyme.
My dirty sink’s a dripping water clock,
my decades chiseled into its wet rock,
the past a widening frieze of cryptic signs.
I’ll call back, Muse, when I run out of time.

.

.

The Errant Knight

Pictures of him at play, aged five or six,
are painful. He would always be a knight
with cardboard shield and lances made of sticks,
questing to save the damsel from her plight.

I didn’t set out to domesticate
the wild swashbuckling boy in front of me,
to melt his armor into spoons, to weight
his feet with ball and chain and swallow the key.

What dreams have I unwittingly absorbed,
ground up, digested into our sane life?
He brandishes a briefcase, not a sword.
No dragons now, just three kids and a wife.

He’s captive in a sorceress’s power.
I want to bring him back, to set him free,
as if he were a princess in a tower.
That must be just the errant knight in me.

.

.

Cara Valle is an English teacher and Catholic homeschooling mother, living in Virginia. Her poems have previously appeared in First Things, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Think, The Lyric, and other journals.

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9 Responses

  1. Cynthia Erlandson

    These are wonderful reflections of the mother-poet! I also homeschooled my children, and didn’t get much writing done during those years. I think “Missed Call” is especially delightful! The children are definitely worth it; but the frustrated writer is always there.

    Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    Both poems are fine work. The rhyme scheme of “Missed Call” is subtly done, and “The Errant Knight” sustains the comparison of the child to a knight through all four quatrains with great skill.

    Reply
  4. Anna J Arredondo

    Cara,
    These are wonderfully relatable, well-crafted poems. Thank you for sharing them!
    I like your varied refrain of time in Missed Call, from “another time” to “spare time” to “when I’ve run out of time.” Evidenced by the two poems here, you clearly haven’t put the Muse on hold until your time should have run out entirely, of which I am glad.

    Reply
  5. Paul Freeman

    My fave line -‘the past a widening frieze of cryptic signs’.

    Two wonderful reads, Cara.

    Reply
  7. C.B. Anderson

    Taken together, these two poems were a veritable riot of thoughtfulness. Well done, Cara.

    Reply
  9. Talbot

    “The Errant Knight” is very poignant to me, and is there a sadder image for loss of childhood than melting a kid’s “armor into spoons”? Well done, all around.

    Reply

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