For Mother’s Day
                                    

Here there can be no excuse for sadness!

All must be happy on this Mother's Day!

Pleased to be, for being comes this way;

Pleased to feel the common sense of gladness.

Yet some are blighted, broken by life's badness,

Maimed by mothers battering as they may,

Owned by grief unowned, and tears that stay

Through joy and sorrow, sanity and madness.

How might such victims join the celebration,

Enduring happiness they cannot share,

Remaining, as they must, marooned outside,

'Mid memories too painful to recall?

So might there still be love in the relation,

Despite the rage that, buried, yields despair,

A longing in the child that screamed and cried

Yet strong enough to make sense of it all.