the other side of the street

 Hi friends! I have been going through a real melancholy and reflective phase. Maybe it's my age and time. Maybe it's February. But I have felt a sadness. Not really depressed, just a sort of sad. My kids had names for it growing up... That Sunday night feeling and The Dupree Feeling.   I am feeling it lift, though, as the birds sing in the morning again and the sun stays out longer. Art helps so much... paintings,music, dance,poetry and stories.
I am going to share a poem that my dear friend Monica wrote years ago. It struck me, the minute I read it and has stayed with me always. I recently came across it again.  It is called 'the other side of the street.'   

 i'm out sweeping sidewalks
after a week's worth of spring rain and
cold wind that's blown tree-seeds and
helicopter pods and anything
not yet summer-tied
to the explosion of growth in my yard

and i imagine how i must look to the 
young neighbor women
tending to their kids on bikes
pushing strollers
and counting heads
busy with the hum
of activity threaded to family

i used to be on their side of the street
with my own kids
watching curiously as the older women
in older houses
swept sidewalks and weeded their small gardens

i'd watch slyly,not wanting them to know
that i wondered what it felt like
to have kids grown and gone
and days long with light and time

to lean on a broom and turn into the sun
and go in and out of the house
at whim with such ease and
not a backward glance
or a scolding word

and now i've become that woman
who sweeps her sidewalk
and listens to the joyous cries
of other people's children set free by spring

hearing the echoes of my own grown girls
​far from home.

monica's kitchen. a great place to be. 

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