Perhaps, after all, life is more powerful than death.
It keeps happening no matter the multitudes
eternally obliterated in wars and other savage ignorances
or by diseases which feed upon us
like guests at a banquet,
yet, there it is again, right in my garden,
those gladiators, roses and slugs,
fighting and dying and always more.
In an alley in Benares, a baby tossed in the trash,
found by a beggar, the beginning of a long lineage.
Kittens in a bag in the river, but one survives
with a crook in its tail to be passed on and on.
Ah, the forms life takes—and then there are ourselves
who contemplate all this and know our part in it,
to bear the agony of loving the dying,
to witness the pain life everywhere endures,
yet, laughing with friends, being silly or crying
and holding one another
or being silent together
or alone.
by Barbara Wolf
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1 comment:
'The Mother's Poem' expresses how old age comes upon us when we least expect it. Suddenly we don't even recognize ourselves.
In 'The Daughter's Response', the speaker is profoundly upset by the mother's view of herself and of growing old. She remembers how it was through the years of growing up and watching her mother as she went through several stages of her life. There's a sense of fear on the part of the speaker who knows that she, too, will grow old. The mother's attitude distresses her.
- BW
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