In times like this I want to push aside

all my feeble attempts for recognition and

success (whatever those things mean anymore)

and sink into the duty of family and body,

into the murmur of domesticity.

I could make small things for around the house

the way our grandmothers used to do —

twist sun baked grass into kitchen dolls,

lob acrylic paint into pansies

onto thrift store lamp shades.

A basket of dried petals for the back of the toilet

to distract from the obscenity of the bowl.

I could bake cakes so accidentally dense they would fill me

with the desire to give it another go

and I would wander into the flinty

satisfaction of getting nominally better

at something over time.

I’d resist the modern urge to use myself as a filter

for every bloated shred of media that glances over my periphery.

Allow my children to grip every minute

of my trivial, screen doused week—let them pull me

from the dripping maw

of my angry brain.

Six months ago we moved to a small island with no traffic lights

a place where people sell baked goods on the side of the road

without irony and now my car handles these curves with the muscle memory,

lazy composure of someone more seasoned and life weary.

On the drive to school I mentally recline in the zero gravity

that exists between exiting the house and

before I dislodge them from car to classroom–

we pass muddy pastures, flaking arbutus—

I will it all to lie to my face

and of course I am in the clutches of their story because

the ones who want to be lied to

are the first to believe.

I’m realizing now more than ever that I want all of it to deceive;

the expressionless grey of the sky, the Coleman cooler of

chicken eggs hitching my attention with its handmade sign.

I want the slow consideration of new livestock to merely dot the hills in menagerie,

the eventual slaughter in it all to only be implied.

the cherry blossom studded church to only be a reminder

of how old stone survives, not of how

it fails to hold in the heat.

To see the eyes of my children all I have to do is crook the rear view mirror

a small inch to the left—

so often I have to deny myself their faces. I toy with the idea of letting them in

on more of the horrors of this world,

little frogs in the water incrementally accustomed to

the rolling boil.

Of course the goal is to exercise my duty as a parent,

socialise, inform. But the truth is I’ve never been great at editing

down hard truths.

Is it possible that the verb sheltered is no longer the parental weapon it once was

when I first got into the game?

Or has something pivotal changed in the last ten years?

How much more time do we have until a term like

helicopter parent denotes doting,

heedless indulgence.

How much more time until doting is our last grand luxury

lost to all this decay.

Until helicopter means only; 

a safe ride out of a

once peaceful place.