Becoming a Mother these days

She believed she didn’t want to be one.
Her life focussed on work, on the run.
At an earlier point she might have done
The needful (if it had worked) but fate it seemed had none
Such intentions. So she shunned
The idea of a daughter or a son.

Her heart forced to be hard bore the brunt
Of judgemental harsh eyes. She put up a front
That she was doing what she’d intended, she learnt
How to shield herself. She set up a cogent
series of repartees, products for her calming foment.*

She never really dreamt: a pragmatist. The feeling crept
Inside her, implanted without consent, by deft
Children of her sisters’. Watching them grow left
An aching surge of instinct, washing pretence. Bereft

Now of her prior notions. Not on anyone’s behest
She decided, for her own, on her own to bequest
Her ancestry, her love, her everything. She made a request

At a late age. She asked, even on warning of death
To have a child–to gestate and birth, to give breath

To a person–to nurture; to apply for the only job she’d found perfect.

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*foment used in its archaic form, meaning: to bathe (a part of the body) with warm or medicated lotions.

 

Mother’s love (c) Jeyheich from Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 
 

The first thought I had this morning was Rhyme. So here's my offering, which is rather personal, in a form that was made by the talent writer, Judy Dykstra-Brown of lifelessons blog. The scheme is called Sylvestrian Near Rhyme. You can read her poem here.