Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Marrow stuff


It’s easy to like a poem that scoops out the marrow of what it means to be a loving parent (in my case, grandparent). This poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer offers much of the wonderful truth about loving the little ones, including the sadness of wanting so desperately to guarantee their happiness—we would give up all else if we could do that….



A Devastation

In the dark before we are fully awake
I hold my son on the couch.

He curls his long thin limbs
into my familiar lap, his body

startlingly warm and soft
and surprisingly light, though

he gives me all his weight.
No, I do not want to let go of this,

and I hold him here, though there
are lunches to make, hold him

though there is snow to shovel,
hold him though my arm falls asleep,

though the clock ticks toward school
and work and dawn. I am well aware

there are other things I long to hold,
impossible things, like his happiness,

his security, his certainty that he is beloved,
long even to hold onto my idea that I

am a good mother, that I will never
let him down. Though I know I do.

Oh love, is that you,
shaking my body?

Published March 23, 2016, on Rosemerry’s website: A Hundred Falling Veils










Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016 All rights reserved.

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