Tina

What impact do those women have
     Who live their lives around us when we’re young
          As seeds are sown in fertile soil,
               No weed as yet being set
                    To spring to life as if by chance
                         Some day much later unaware?

They weave their life around our woof of self with warp-like culture
     As we grow up into their life –
          Soft words of comfort, wit and charm
               Lay our foundations sick or strong
                   On which to build and live our walk.

I tried to locate Tina now I’m older – she more so
     To ask and thank or just to walk a pace or two
          The other end of lives entangled in the past
               Now fused together deep in countless ways.

I think the thread of politics was laid for me those days
     The politics of love – beyond the noisy kind –
          Forswearing war, of course, but more –
              Much deeper in the mind and soul
                   Of each – the challenge to be fair
                        Not to ourselves alone
                             But to the others –

And if both self and other can’t survive
     Then let the other live
           By pouring our resource to them
               As full as we can give.

I was an inconvenient birth –
     The kind today that’s flushed away
          With scarce a thought or backward glance –
               Mom let me live – was this because
                    The woman walked with us and held a dignity for life
                         That showed the Way?

My mom went on to give her life
     That five of us might greater be
          Than she could ever hope or dream –
               Nor ever spoke regretful words
                    Or wistful glances throw as we
                         Went forward into life full-woven
                             Of her stock for all the world to see.

And now each week they wonder why
     I take the time to join her to the Church that nursed her
          Long before my birth and presence in her life –
               “What time?” I ask, “She gave me sixty years thus far,
                    Stand back, rethink, and see!”

But as I look around me now
     With my horizon creeping in
          And Boomer peers now creaking to the grave,
                I pause and ask – what warp we wove
                     To woof of infants’ minds –
                          Survivors of the flushing drains
                               Of inconvenient births.

Were there no Tina’s in our homes
     To model Life and Truth and Way
          So, drifting through each easy day
              We face now here the full-grown crop
                    To hear them say – “same thing” –
                         Then face ourselves the flushing drains
                              Of ‘inconvenient life’.

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