A Home of My Own Design

26 September 2025

https://poems.culturing.net/2025/09/a-home-of-my-own-design/

The mother reaches for love, remembering
her children and how they brought her
the orgasm of birth. Was their life
a consumable good, brought forth just to nourish
and satisfy the mother's most secret desire?
Had they not their own life, their own pulse,
their own dreams? She is sacred, of course,
as the giver of life, and yet darkened
by unfelt desire and urgent craving
for a kind of connection that cannot be understood,
which her own life denies her. Has some man
failed her that she looks to her children
for the kind of fulfillment through love
that can only be known by equals? It was never
voluntary, not in her whole life, and so
why should her love be any different?

--

It should differ because the heart breaks
absent freedom, and a mother who does not care
that her child's heart breaks is no mother at all.
But what if she can't help it? What if
she is doing her best, though constrained
by her own limitations? The child must survive,
and on this they agree, though the needs of the child
are ignored, not from malice, but from simple ignorance, or a conflict of needs,
a conflict of personalities perhaps, but more likely
a defect of one of them.

--

And yet the sun still rises, birds still sing
and rivers flow and they have always flown.
Does time heal or does time make us numb,
having tired of the pain and of all attempts to heal?
Sometimes flight is the prudent choice, when healing
is urgently needed, and no other path offers
even the prospect of life. But the best strength
stands firm in the galeforce winds,
in the hurricane of maddening, unwanted love
and says "no" for as long as it takes.
And yet even this strength, though it wins many battles,
may never at last win the war, which began
before any now living were born. But the fight
is worth fighting, and one day this soldier,
when the dust has settled, may find himself
longing for even this puzzling enemy, whose love was too much,
to explain where he came from, and why
he is good at building walls, thick walls
that so few ever enter, within which at least he is free.

--

But a door might suffice, if, supposing we found
a good locksmith, we keep out intruders. This way
the walls stand as a testament
to all that has come before, the reality of human folly
and the pain of ignorance. This is the way
to life, an honest life, though one not lacking in pain.
So good morning sweet sun. I now greet you
from safety, aware and vigilant but calm and at rest
in a home at last, and a home of my own design.