Mother's Day
(to my children)
I do not doubt you would
have liked
one of those pretty mothers in the ads:
complete with adoring
husband and happy children.
She's always smiling, and if she cries at
all
it is absent of lights and camera,
makeup washed from her
face.
But since you were born of
my womb, I should tell you:
ever since I was small like you
I wanted to be
myself -- and for a woman that's hard --
(even my Guardian Angel refused to
watch over me
when she heard).
I cannot tell you that I
know the road.
Often I lose my way
and my life has been a painful
crossing
navigating reefs, in and out of storms,
refusing to listen to the
ghostly sirens
who invite me into the past,
neither compass nor binnacle
to show me the way.
But I advance,
go forward
holding to the hope
of some distant port
where you, my children -- I'm
sure --
will pull in one day
after I've been lost at sea.
~ Daisy Zamora ~
(Clean Slate, trans. by Margaret Randall
and Elinor Randall)
(left button to play, right button
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