Chance Gift
Chance Gift
Just as a Mother does not leave her child behind
Nor can I drop my rhymes!
Yet my Mother has left me aside…
Shall I then give up these lines?
Time has made me regret.
Memory has made me forget.
But I recall reasoning it on the tarmac
Your character would shake this womb
And a baby needs a healthy home.
If I had been dramatic and deranged
I would have chanced it so you’d remain and stay
But to control a man is not my way.
Neither being ready it seems, I would say.
What am I waiting for, for what is this day?
I made a story out of a man I hardly knew
And upon me my poems now prey
Parasitic like a growing babe
While all the men who’ve felt my rays
Next move to family and marriage
I must say it would be nice to get paid
For rendering service and inspiration to them!
You do not see me pushing a stroller
Nor do you see a ring on my finger
But I am bound and I am tethered
To the spirit and whatever of a former connection
If only because his attention was projection
Of my own selfish need for twin reflection
And do we ever really know or love another?
I’ve yet to fall in love with myself first
It’s what happens when our parent-creators dismiss us.
We go searching for meaning in ruts and rubbish.
Oh how I’ve laughed behind their backs
When they’ve said, “Sylvie Hill, I’m damaged.”
As if I’m intact, I think, as I piece them together and fix them.
Then off they go working the world with renewed confidence!
While I retreat back into my paper, poem and pens.
Not questioning a tree that shades me
A thunderstorm that ________ me
Or melancholy that keeps me intelligent
Questioning how to ever let go of Chance’s gift.
Sylvie Hill 2017