Poetry: Things You Didn’t Put On Your Resume

Things You Did­n’t Put On Your Resume
–Joyce Sutphen

How often you got up in the mid­dle of the night
when one of your chil­dren had a bad dream,

and some­times you woke because you thought
you heard a cry but they were all sleeping,

so you stood in the moon­light just listening
to their breath­ing, and you did­n’t mention 

that you were an expert at putting toothpaste
on tiny tooth­brush­es and bend­ing down to wiggle

the tooth­brush ten times on each tooth while
you sang the words to songs from Annie, and 

who would sus­pect that you know the fingerings
to the songs in the first four books of the Suzuki

Vio­lin Method and that you can do the voices
of Pooh and Piglet espe­cial­ly well, though

your absolute favorite thing to read out loud is
Bed­time for Frances and that you picked 

up your way of read­ing it from Glyn­nis Johns,
and it is, now that you think of it, rather impressive

that you read all of Nar­nia and all of the Ring Trilogy
(and oth­ers too many to men­tion here) to them

before they went to bed and on way out to
Yel­low­stone, which is anoth­er thing you don’t put 

on the resume: how you took them to the ocean
and the moun­tains and brought them safe­ly home.