What has been done to mother
is a story rarely told
Of how we stripped and begged her
to carry all the coals
Like chattel she was made, it seems
to bend and rend and stretch
To run down the clock in payment
of someone else’s debts
A mother spends her energy
sometimes it seems for nought
She bleeds for life’s necessities,
small victories hard fought
From her dreams she cuts away
the hopes she holds most dear
And buries them in cluttered drawers
to ponder year by year
Beloved though she is, our mother
her wounds she’ll not display
Because deep down in shadowy compartments
her thoughts are locked away
Not only grey
but spring and laughter
and little jewels
and clean, clear water…
Of blended shades are mothers painted
No saints or martyrs here created…
Yes it’s true a mother loves
always without condition
But how much of what she gives away
is seized by forced attrition
The tyranny of tradition is what binds us all to her
and this should make us shudder
For perhaps there was another way
to make for us a mother.