A Paean to Childhood - The Mother's Birthday

Feb. 21, 2005

A quiet town, simplicity of days,

Ice cream and my mother's cigarettes,

A tiny house that welcomed all who came,

The sun-porch with its warm and welcome light

The little room in which my childhood grew,

The comfort of a home where love still reigned,

The radio that brought the news of war,

Adventure and suspense and fairy tales

Spun for children's fantasies and dreams,

To whet the fertile landscape of the mind,

Our prayers became a symphony of psalms

The music of a thousand choirs heard

And singing that could set the soul aflame.

There was a graveyard full of unknown names

A drunken caretaker always kind to us

And flowers charged with memories and grief,

A quiet town, simple in its ways.

Across the road were fields in which we ran

As my mother wept for sorrows great and small

And shared the pain of others as the hearse

Passed slowly by the roses at our door.

There was a little store of such we children loved,

Where one might pass the hours in delight

With liquorice and candy canes and mints.

It was only one long block away

And we could walk to it past fragrances

Of morning when the kindly sun bent down

To kiss our bodies touched with warming gold.

It was run by Indians aloof but kind,

The wheeling stars their potent auguries,

Friends of earth and sky and worlds unseen

Who owning nought possessed the universe,

The earth their mother, honoured and obeyed.

They seldom spoke but embodied dignity,

In silence seemed to dwell alone in thought.

Oh, I remember beauty in the shade

Beneath the hanging clusters of the grape

In secret arbours where we hid and played

Reliving lives of knights on battlefields

And heroes slain and kingdoms lost and won.

It was a simpler time when mind was occupied

With things within and needed not the 'tube'

To see a world of beauty or of sin.

We moved one day where a child could freely roam

Nor fear the crossing of a city street,

Where deer ran free and clever squirrels found

A way to open chestnuts on the tree.

The skies were clear and smog was but a word

Unknown to feet that revelled in the grass

And hearts that opened at the break of day

To revealing joy in things that swiftly pass.

I remember the harvest dripping from my hand

The berries that were crushed in crimson mouths,

The juice that ran in rivulets of joy,

The burst of spring, the first blue hyacinths,

The cherries hanging red against the sky,

The pungent earth, hydrangeas blue and pink

And the magnificence of peonies.

But a part of me was left in that small town

And subtle images still recur today,

The memory of coloured snow-clad lights

When drifting flakes dropped down on Christmas nights

And all the world became a holy place.

A child could see the manger midst the glow

Of candles where the deity was set

In a place where adults would no longer know

Whose beacon light has faded long ago.

Nowhere on earth can I now call my home

Unless the soul sing out and claim the world

A province of its own with earth as base,

The seas, the mountains and the vasts within,

The wonderment that holds the whirling stars

That course their way as harbingers of dawn,

The sun a symbol of divine largesse.