My Daughter's Mother

Inspired by: The ties that bind

There have been smiles
and there have been tears
and over the capacious years
I have been aware
of her ever shrinking laughter
which, though shriveled
by time's sorrowful shower
still rings with the same zing
as before,
and the definitive tone
of her masterly speech
has carried the same
effervescent peal...
to continue sanguinely
forever and more.

I have watched her thaw
in the snug warmth of my love
and have seen her frost
in the ice-age that followed.

For the love of her voice,
I have even borrowed phones,
some scampered international seconds.....
some precious, priceless stolen moments.....
...........and I have also heard with disdain;
her scornful Siberian words, brimming with pain.

But she has invariably
shone through bravely
from the misery pile
that I have heaped
on her indomitable,
yet vulnerable pride.

We are:
neither heroes,
nor rogues.
Or maybe:
we are both.
Who cares?
Who knows?

I only know
that I have nursed her long;
through my sick, desolate,
utterly cheerless days
and then strangely;
I have deprived her
of my crooning love songs
for a boundless age.

And she has still;
remained steadfastly chained
to me and my shifting moorings.

She has threatened damningly
and she has loved gingerly
She has cried regularly
and she has understood wisely
and I have still;
loved her spasmodically
eccentrically.....randomly.

It must be love
to have survived through
all peaks and troughs,
for they said:
with Saturn retrograde,
love is unfailingly dead.
But that which endures
north node's chicanery
and all astrological trickery,
can…..and must be love;
distilled pure and clean
through life's churning machine;
something that remains in the end
when all motives and promises are dead
and just a wholesome belongingness remains
....unconditional....unqualified.....unstained.

*

It is for her
that I have humbly written
this trifle little verse.....
...................:

For my beloved wife,
who dropped anchor
and held together
our mercurial, yet resilient lives.
I express:
my utmost adoration to her;
the one and only:
mother of my lovely daughter.

© Chandra S.