Some Little Thoughts

She perched amid the layered leaves
Which, like tiered and serried paper reams,
Obscured part of the jambe of my vestibule door.
There she built a nest of twigs,
And her young were born, three at a time:
The little red robin of my Canadian dreams.

When rains come pelting down one day,
And soaked the ground beneath her nest,
She sat there, ever watchful … silent … still,
Guarding tweeting, beauteous, naked chicks:
She sat there, alert for any foreign threat,
Which may try to rob her of her loving breast.

And, in the half light of the setting sun,
I heard her fly to meet the need
Of hatchlings, chirping loud and long,
Begging for their evening meal;
She worked with a parent’s willingness:
Gone selfish thoughts or wanton greed.

When time it came to say, goodbye,
To the brood which she had born, in part,
She said it, almost silently,
As she watched them, one by one,
Fly from the nest, on wings not yet strong,
And she looked on with the stoutest heart.

In pensive mood, I pondered long
The reason young leave the safest nest,
To brave the dangers of the cold unknown.
I wondered: What is the measure of a parent’s love?
How long is the patient loving met?
Who weighs the loving parent’s heart – Forever blessed?

What is the formula, endowed in her
Whom, on conception, a family is lovingly started?
What is the nut of love that falls from the tree
To germinate and grow in fertile fields
Where sacrifice is taken for granted,
As she waits for her offspring to be parted?

The pains of parentage, overlooked, and too oft forgot,
Are the pains, which are gladly borne
By mothers of whales, of birds, of cows, of man,
From all parts of the world where life springs anew,
And love abounds to the song of the wind,
While too often, the selfless mother’s heart stands ragged and torn.

And, when night blankets the songs of the day
And the dew on flowers’ petals is caught,
Then, the mother sinks quiet in meditative mode,
Of deeds of days gone by,
And of her children’s osmotic learning.
And she thinks: ‘Have I done all that I ought?’

And do the children of mothers, yellow, black, or white,
Love her for what she tries to do,
Recognising that mothers, all over the world,
Were once children of mothers, too?
And from the children, mothers learn:
Love leads to giving freedom: That is offspring’s universal due.