Our world

after “This World” by Mary Oliver

I would like to create a home
in which there are rarely any messes,
but that seems impossible
given the fact that children live here,
considering the Legos that sprinkle
our playroom floor and prick
our soles,
a deck of cards fanned out 
across the coffee table,
oodles of library books littering
the kids’ bedrooms, each object a portal
to another realm where imagination reigns
and couch cushions meld
into the body of a race car,
a swingset transforms
into a shuttle rocketing to Mars,
stones unearthed
from the flowerbeds become 
marble.

“We could be rich!”
my son cries, cradling his prizes,
holding them out to me like offering.
Dirt speckles his grin,
dresses his hands and feet,
piles next to him on the patio,
I sigh,
send him to rinse up, pick up my phone
and scroll the news,
confronting a barrage of harshness.
I sigh again,
but he laughs, unaware,
spraying his palms clean with the garden hose
— or is it a fire-breathing dragon?

(I would like to create a world
in which there are rarely any messes
but that seems impossible
given the fact that humans live here, 
and they keep hurting
each other.)

I glance at my son’s hands,
fresh and five years young,
whatever they graze
shape-shifts from ordinary
to extraordinary.
Could they fashion
marble from our muck?
Maybe
we could be rich.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale — an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Ordinary Inspiration.”