Writer’s Curse

We drove down the road, perhaps
picking up McDonald’s for tea
on our way somewhere, perhaps -
                                    I forget -
but it doesn’t matter.

My children, 3 blonde boys,
lean over the back of the front seat
as I scribble a few lines waiting
for the lights to change.

‘Everything isn’t a poem Mum’
the eldest complains
and I hear in his voice:

stop
writing our lives down. Click the nib
back into your pen and pay attention to us.
Not the fat lady waiting for the bus,
or the red car whose stereo pulses the street.

He has his fingertip poised
on the mother-guilt button.
I want to put down my pen

but the long rows of trees
marshalled inside my head whisper
through their fir-finger branches.

There’s no silence,
                              no rest.
The terrible pukekos of my dreams
rush to me pecking and smothering
with their loathsome feathers
as I sit on the road
                              unable to rise.

Words trip, tumble, stumble –
so loud in my head
they clamour for the needle’s eye,
plastic tube of ink,
that feeds the paper.