"Juggling Parenthood at Seventy" -- My Poem in New Feathers Anthology

There are many forms now of having a poem published, and some of them are online -- but New Feathers Anthology also produces a printed collection each year of some of its poems. I am very excited that "Juggling Parenthood at Seventy" is on page 133!

If you are a poetry nerd, you may recognize the form "underneath" this poem: It's "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop and begins, "The art of losing isn't hard to master." One of the techniques that the formidable poetry professor Ellen Bass teaches is taking such a poem and writing your own version, a sort of homage but also a set of training wheels. Since I love "One Art," I chose to work from its pattern.

Then, as you might pick up, I also was thinking of those "directions" for how to juggle. I tried once! I was hopeless. But I suspect that, like parenting, you can read tons of instructions but the reality will always be different, and you have to adapt and get used to it. I never gave the juggling enough of a chance ... but parenting, well, yes, I'm still doing that. Many of you will know exactly the feeling.

 

Juggling Parenthood at Seventy 

[published in New Feathers Anthology, August 2025]

 

The diagrams suggest it isn’t hard:

you start with all three balls, and toss the first

release the second, pass the third—it’s art—

then you believe you’re ready for the next.

 

I start the day with all the balls in hand

prepared to just confirm I’ve found the art

where I believe I’m ready for the next

demand for help from one of my grown sons.

 

Release my expectations, trust the art:

I set them free to fly, I gave them wings.

I ache each time they cry for help, grown sons

who stumble and who bleed, for love’s own sake.

 

I raised them well and saw them claim their wings,

each full of confidence and boundless hope—

convinced that love could raise them like an art.

I blame myself each time they crash and cry.

 

How can I feed fresh confidence and hope?

Release them, give them freedom, though it hurts—

when will they rise, instead of crash and cry?

The diagram suggests it isn’t hard.

 

 BK

 

"Getting Published": Cover Reveal, and Lambs

It's lambing season! Photo taken at Too Little Farm, 2022.

Most days, I'm focused squarely on the next poem, with notes on scraps of paper scattered around my desk, and a brisk morning walk to get the mind delving into new (or treasured old) ways to see, and to speak about it. I'm loving this.

But poetry can be meant, much of the time, for sharing. I'm not a person who memorizes her own lines. Robert Frost did that, I know -- so did Vermont's Ruth Stone, so that when her vision completely failed, she could still share her work. 

Faint excuse, I know, but true: It's easier to memorize a poem when it rhymes, with lines that match in length. We all know song lyrics, a great example of that. Limericks, too. 

For me, sharing a poem means "submitting" it to a literary journal that's looking for similar work. Pull that apart and there are three challenges: Reading enough of the publications' already-printed work to see whether "my stuff" might fit, then choosing a set of three to five of my poems to send, and then waiting ... and waiting ... because it takes time for any person or group to go through the dozens or hundreds of arriving poems and choose their favorites.

 That's the stage I'm usually in. Today I have more than 40 sets of poems "out there" for editors to consider. Maybe three will get chosen, and that will be worth celebrating.

 

In fact, in the past few months, I've had a big YES from two wonderful publishers taking on groups of my poems to turn them into the slim softcovers called chapbooks. The first, THRESHOLDS, is filled with writing about transitions, big and small changes in life. For me, some of those include walking through breast cancer discovery and treatment, and walking into widowhood. (Why yes, I do see life as walking, a lot of the time.) The poems also open doors to other transitions that we all experience, like going to school, or taking a job, even raising children or bonding with pets.

The second collection, PORTRAIT STUDIO ON THE RIDGE, gathers work that speaks to this place where I live, which I love dearly, even in March and November.

THRESHOLDS will be published by Kelsay Books around the end of May or early June. PORTRAIT STUDIO aims for next January. For each of these, there are now very very long lists from the publishers on my share of the tasks -- pulling together all the pieces of the books (cover, words from other authors) and preparing for book orders from individual readers and stores. It's a complicated set of labors, and isn't likely to spark the joy that writing a good poem creates.

Still, this is what the poems are for: heading out to you all. I'm on it. 

What do lambs have to do with all this? Hey, it's March ... in like a lion, out like a lamb. I'm in mid-month as I write this, looking forward to those playful lamb-ish moments after more work. Wishing you the same.