REGENERATION

What rescues us from oblivion when our lives end? Only the promise of immortality through our children and the small bright torches that pass from one generation to the next.

 


SONS

On a yellowed flyleaf,
half a century ago,
my mother wrote to say
Birthday Wishes
and Mum, that name
that buries self away.

I was her firstborn,
headstrong, loving,
exuberant, willfully astray.

My childhood fears,
unbidden tears, the small, lost
battles of the day,
she dissipated in her arms.

My daughter
holds her sons that way.