Q

Today's adventure:  I haven't been allowed to get close to the hummingbird nest outside my office window when the diligent mother is sitting on it.  She flies away as soon as I approach, so I hadn't been able to get a picture.  I set my little Sony QX100 on a tripod close to the nest... made the necessary adjustments and went back to the office and waited until she came back. I controlled the shutter with my iPhone.

Watching this little mother who is programmed to do all the right things to hatch the two eggs, and knowing she will give appropriate care to the chicks when they hatch, I remembered a human mother of a very human little boy I knew a few years before I retired from the world of school.  She was  inadequate... didn't have a clue how to meet the needs of her child.  He was in third grade, and I had known them since he was in pre-kindergarten.  I had seen and heard her scold him when he lingered too long playing with his friends while she was waiting in the carpool lane.  She never smiled or greeted him when he crawled into the back seat of the car.  I'm sure if she had been asked, she would have said, "Of course, I love him...,"  Perhaps she loved him on some level, but it was clear she didn't like him. I wrote something about them once...  I wonder where he is now and how he is surviving... well, I hope.

I went searching through my journals from those years and found the verse written almost twenty-five years ago... which means he is around thirty-three now.


Monday, April 22, 1991

The kid doesn’t stand a chance
mother looms eternally larger than Saturday
and father’s underwear
or something critical
is too tight
so what’s he gonna do
the freckles and the smile
ought to be worth something
standing in the world
with upturned face
on the night when the moon is full
or in an afternoon of split chrysalises
butterflies do indeed come from pods
hard hard caskets
split when life pulses
life pulses
life struggles free
to fly
so maybe the kid has a chance
after all
after all
after all