Too Much Trouble

Cultivating acceptance and hoping for contentment

I’ve been writing poetry since I was 15 years old. Then, it provided me with a way to come to terms with the death of my dad, something that I had to do alone. Later, it helped me make sense of teenage angst, new motherhood, several existential crises, and ageing. In the early days, I published a few poems in magazines and compilations, and two books of my poetry were published, the first in 1976 and the other in 2012. These days, poems are — along with family, weaving, and gardening — providing some stability in what feels like perilous times. Here’s one of them.

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Too Much Trouble
by Wendy Priesnitz

When I have too much trouble,
I write poetry,
little tales that I can control,
turning angst into joy and
trying to create the closure
that may never be possible.

I move the words around
thinking I can bury the past,
which still resides
in my cells and pores
and makes me every age
I ever was.

Parsing the present while
my aging brain tries
to find the right word,
I learn to accept that my life
has turned out just the way
it was meant to.

All I’ve ever been looking for
is contentment
and the perfect poem.