Tuesday Poem: "On Children and Mothers"

Your fervent hopes that I write

“something about children”

is a mother’s nature revealed.

By their selfless love

they second their lives to those of their children.

To write of children is to write of mothers.

Five years of life stares down

through coal buttons of mischief and wonders,

Are these groggy, surly people

really in control of the world out there?

The world of five is bound by a desire

for no boundaries,

to be with the big people,

but there are compensations for masks

and early bedtimes: shielded

from the jags and gouges of a world

outside Transformers, morning TV, Bubble-O-Bills,

kindergarten Picassos and a mother’s love.

Six months of life

represents the investment of a lot of breast milk

as he gurgles in his bouncer

throwing a curve ball smile

through his rusk-besmirched mouth.

His perimeters are smaller than his brother’s,

wind and tears and the succour of the breast

while the faces of giants fill his vision

and huge hands lift him skyward.

And always there is mother,

balancing her day with theirs,

shepherding, nurturing, cajoling them

towards that, over which she has no control:

the future.

In 1986, I was staying for a couple of weeks with my cousin and his wife in Sydney en route to Perth. Their two sons described in this poem are now fine, young adults, forging their way in the world.

The poet wishes to acknowledge One Luv Art Promotion, the publishers of the book, Mother and Child Vibration Heart exhibition, in which this poem first appeared.