DAUGHTER...AND MOTHER

 

Small, busy steps,

up and down the road,

laces undone, I said “careful,

she can stumble on them”,

but mother said almost merrily”

well..if she falls she learns..”

Mother was tough

but daughter not less

and she didn’t fall,

it seemed she would stumble

but definitely stood,

her voice tumbling around,

while, almost unnoticed,

she kept unzipping her mother’s boots..

( once and twice and three times and more

in that child’s eternity I have left behind…)

“Shut up” mother said zipping her own boots back,

with eternity’s patience,

“I am talking to an old friend..”

Mother sounding, like her daughter,

very matter-of-fact.

The climax happened not much later

when mother looked at me

with a great fun in her gaze and said:

“Look at her eyes, see how

she is, just a little, squeezing them,

that’s when

she is pooing.. in her nappy..”

And, instinctively, we at once

turned our gaze away to allow her privacy.

 

A bit later while I was telling mother

the latest calamities of my life

daughter kept trying to intervene

shouting brand-new shouts of strife…

And I felt it, only a little then,

but I feel it fully now,

no matter what, life goes on

and it’s always great how.