My mind is blank but my desire to write is in full swing. It's the hospital quiet, the knowing I'll need to jump up and help my mom at any moment, the quiet that is too quiet and full of dream mumbles when she sleeps at any time and so often through out the day. I don't know what to write beyond hospital, illness and healing, caregiving, raising children at this trying time, seeing that we shower enough, eat enough, rest enough, laugh enough in the midst of it all, my mother included.

I don't know what else to write but I don't want to write about the hours here, the moving silence, lack of creative thought, concern with bodily functions and where to place their product. This is not beautiful in the physical and I haven't yet words for the spiritual element, the sacred ribboning through everything, every word, giggle, joke, request for help from my mom (matters as simple as moving the bed up and down), every flash of anger, frustration, fear. But the spiritual substance is more real and beautiful at this time than what the bodies can or cannot do.

Back to blank and my hands rest sideways across the keyboard as I wonder if words other than those concerning NOW will eventually come. I know they will, but I am not patient. I am as a toddler claiming “Mine!” to a thing that doesn't belong to me right now, that capacity to time travel for a poem, to slide through the moment in a way that shows me how to present it, senses alive, so the reader can be here from there, and then record that gift.

Later my dear, later.