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| My daughter & a flock of Laughing Gulls |
"The important thing in life is to let the years carry us along." Federico Garcia Lorca, Yerma"
This evening I press my ear to your chest,
hear the ocean's waves and laughing gulls
that reside inside, distant laughter of children
you've made fast friends, your voice
calling "Mother, come look!"
Close my eyes, see you walk a mermaid's path,
white frothy sea foam and iridescent bubbles
slowly fade and pop as morning's surf recedes,
tears glistening as you mourn their death.
Wrap myself around you, whelk like,
my shell far too fragile for true protection.
Realize tears are as important as laughter
yet my heart bangs along the shore,
chipped and worn, fighting for a journey
resembling my dreams perhaps more than yours.
And there's the fissure as you turn
and take the covers with you surely as decisively
as the tide reclaims what is hers. Always.
So, I settle upon the porch, chastised a bit,
yet revel in the sounds I've heard,
know you are alive and growing,
tumbling along life's shoreline
beneath the laughing gulls.
by Margaret Bednar, March 29, 2018
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| Walking the Mermaid Path - When Mermaids die, legend has it they turn to sea foam |
This poem uses an example of one child, but truly this poem embraces both my 10 year old son and 23 year old daughter - we just got back from Isle of Palms, SC (a hop skip and jump from historic Charleston).
My poem has nothing to do with the play "Yerma" which is a "tragic poem" telling the story of a childless woman living in rural Spain. Her desperate desire for motherhood becomes an obsession. This is all in Spanish (which I don't speak) but I posted it here as I am going to watch it this weekend.
