Helen Bar-Lev, IL

 

 

Free Verse   Celebrating Mother's Day May 9, 2010   Yael   Before you were born I was stone you sat heavy inside me a lump pushing out my tummy, kicking my ribs Children had always overwhelmed me, perplexed me; the pregnancy was an accident— parenthood planned by the Fates, not me Besides, how could I bring you into a world gone mad? What insane future would greet you? It was 1968, the first space ship was launched; we watched together, you excited inside my belly I was unhappy, mother-to-be intellectual, doubtful of my ability to guide you through the chaos I could foresee So that, when you were born, I was unprepared, like a frozen stick of butter does not expect what will happen when it meets the sun The moment I saw you— so beautiful— I melted, into a golden flood of love     The Mother of the Soldier   As we walk from the car through puddles and mud our glasses drizzle-splattered our hearts shredded we pass by another funeral and hear a woman eulogizing into a microphone to the hundred mourners, perhaps more, present, protected from the weather under multicoloured umbrellas we listen without our consent because the loudspeaker commands we do so and realize it is her son, underneath the shroud, yesterday a soldier, who ended his life, and she, swallowing years of tears, is attempting to respect this act her voice fades as we approach the area of your funeral; at least you reached fifty-six years before you made that same decision all our sorrow and that of the only ten friends and relatives who have come to bury you, is but a teardrop in the sea of grief of the mother of that soldier