WOULDN’T IT BE NICE – A POEM FOR MOTHER’S DAY 2017
“Wouldn’t it be nice …”
the Beach Boys serenade,
our dating dream for us,
a life spent together
uninterrupted, focused
only on each other.
9:15 pm, the song
runs through my mind
as I open the bedroom
door, call out to you softy
to awaken and pause
for your eyes adjust to
the light leaking in
from the hallway before
throwing the switch
to flood with light
the darkened bedroom.
Another night apart,
much like when we dated.
Luck and schedules may
give us two nights together
in a row, a gift bestowed
every other week, yet,
grateful am I for even
one night with you,
exhausted as you may be
sleeping in your chair.
Feelings of disappointment,
of dreams cheated cruelly
might be justified to one
of an ungrateful heart.
Thirty of our nearly
forty-three years of
marriage spent apart
in order to just survive.
How cruel a joke to play
on two people so in love.
Yet, I kneel before you
in humble gratitude,
one who recognizes
the tremendous sacrifice
that you have made for
our children and I.
A mother’s love transcends,
transcends in ways far
exceeding the norm of
expectations and limits.
Self-sacrifice, never taught
but, seemingly a part of
a mother’s DNA, something
that comes from the moment
of conception, as a mother’s
life flows from herself
to the child within her uterus.
Not so men, not so is
self-sacrifice a given,
except for the Christ
who, as Julian of Norwich
wisely observed, was both
man and mother.
Only the rare, distinctive man,
my own father one of them,
is given this gift of self-sacrifice
freely and without asking.
I, your humble student,
kneel at your feet, yearning
to touch the hem of
your nurses uniform,
that somehow miraculously
I may be cured of my own
self-centeredness and
possess the gift of love
that flows so openly
and willingly from you to us.
I peer out from lighted window
Into the darkened world,
the blessing I impart to you
chasing you as you open
the door to your car.
We smile at one another,
and wave, blowing kisses
to one another as you
drive off in the dark,
much like we did so many years
ago, as the Beach Boys serenaded,
“Wouldn’t it be nice …”
