What Our Kids Become

How is it that any given child
ceases to love his mother and
father at some unavoidable point?
What contortions of fate rip
the innocence from our hearts,
the blind devotion, the unqualified
adoration? Why must we all fall out
with those we first loved, and our
own progeny then refuse us too
in turn? Is this uncomfortable
nature of our lives as it was
intended to be? If for no other
reason than this I cannot believe
in the Great I Am: no good god should
have made a world in which those we've
cared for would spurn that love,
would wriggle free of it with spite
one day, would turn it on its head
and call it lies. What we live
cannot be lies. Our aching is
real, and warranted, and necessary.
Maybe our love doesn't actually die.
Maybe, in every generation, we do
become what our parents would
have wanted, despite ourselves.
Maybe love of mother turns into
just this, once it goes into hiding.

(2008)