Empty Nest

Now that I have the solitude I craved,

and can please myself what I do when,

I find myself missing the hullabaloo

of unpredictable family life

the romping and squabbling and chatter

of two little boys, the necessity

of sports fixtures, lessons, meals, holidays;

all the warmth, the stress, the pleasure, the strife,

the many distractions, the constant clatter ...

now that I'm free to read, write poems, be who

I always thought I wanted to be —

that she quite other than mother/housewife —

I drift amongst all the things I might do

and wonder how much, after all, they matter.

A bref double for the current Poetic Asides form challenge