I looked down at my young daughter, who was looking gratefully and hungrily into my eyes, and I knew instinctively that gone were my days of being able to barricade myself in my study for hours on end… it struck panic into me to think that my ability to keep up the pace of my profession was bring slowly sucked out of me by the child on my breast.
—Renita J. Weems, biblical scholar, minister, writer, mother,
in Listening for God

what are your aspirations
for your writing?
asked the Artist,
who writes and creates
fulltime from her home studio,
whose Room of One’s Own
i covet.

to write and be read,
i answered,
and the response seemed stupid,
simplistic,
but it’s the best i could manage
without getting into it:
how i type one-handed, pecking quiet keys
with a baby curled around my middle;
how i climb into a pulpit, spread out pages of a
good-enough manuscript,
letting the masterwork that might have been
(had the meetings not piled up, had the death not occurred)
float silently away;
how i find the phrase
that breaks open a poem’s stuck door,
and pray it doesn’t blow shut
before i finish playing chutes and ladders.

you see, i am no artist,
i am
ministermothermate,
preacherparentpastorpoetpartner
& & & & &.
my aspiration?
to live the &
as best i can,
to glide down its sloping slide
and land in a heap, laughing;
to nestle in its hammock
and swing, and doze, content;
to hoist myself onto its narrow dais
and offer to the world
whatever I have to give.



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