A few notes of explanation .

Blogging is new to me, and it is taking a while to get it right. e.g.my daughter’s comment last week, which was read as if that poem, Gratitude, was written by my mother and not by me!

Inviting you to follow took a lot of courage.

I am posting a variety of things I have written over the years, taken from my memoirs, travel journals, attempts at fiction, poetry, written usually in response to musings about life and faith, and collections that I have assembled to hand on. But it occurred to me recently that, like artists and photographers, writers need an audience, so you are mine.

Here is today’s item, a poem I wrote about my two beautiful sons a good while ago.

SONS.  by Meg

What is this thing

Between a woman

And her sons?

“When I grow up

I want to marry you,”

They say.

How easy when they’re small

Fat little arms

Cuddles in bed.

The biggest problem

Gone,

As soon as Mummy comes.

Those little hands that creep into her own

As danger

Or a teacher, or a wave draws near.

The meeting of the eyes

Across a crowded room

To reassure

And comfort

When stage-struck, he nearly dies.

Emerging

Big boys now

A shift in focus.

“Where’s my shirt?”

“I need a lift.”

“Can Geoff come over?”

“Do I have to?”

“Why?”

The testing of the waters.

Old bull, young bull.

The father

Teaching how to love their mother

By example.

Much too hard.

The mother

Yearning now

Accepting change as change

Relinquishing.

The thread of love

Stronger than silk

Her certainty and hope.

It’s later now.

She watches footy games

Half-men.

They checked to see she saw that goal

But shy

Their friends’ approval

Makes them gruff.

Be there,

But be invisible

Is what they ask.

A girl arrives

And sees him as her own.

Embrace her too

And bring her with him

Into the circle

Of their home.

The fear comes next

Streets full of threat,

The pull of peers,

Their values not her own.

These sons must make their mark,

Must test and try

And challenge all they know.

She waits and prays

And listens for their sound

Assured by faith

They’ll make it through

To pathways of their own.

And now they’re men

With children of their own.

What memories are theirs?

They watch her standing by

And see her as their child.

The circle surely turned.

Her gaze speaks now

Of gratitude and joy,

Of love that has been proved

And now becomes again

That early wondrous thing,

A woman and a man.

The mother sees

Her sons.