Generations


In your eyes
I see my reflection, what you will me to be;
Yet I wonder,
For I know not who you are-
I am as guilty as you, more so.
What were you, even when I was born?
What are you now?
What has changed you?
What makes you want such things of me, for me?
I hear the stories,
Yet they are strained to me;
Memories only-
No mercy for the young who were not there,
For the old who will leave too soon.
What of you can I truly feel?
What of you is inside me?
I have your genes-
Have I your memories, your fears, your triumphs?
Can I feel the shape of your life,
It's complex textures?
And yet, is this not so for all of us?
Who can truly know another?
Yet the walls are more painful here,
For I grew unseeing
And only found them too late.
The silences are awkward;
The doors close on our heels.

What I would not give
To have the mud of Italy on these heels,
To see a Magnolia blossom
With an artists's eye,
To build the quiet garden space,
To teach the babe to suck,
To hold the life inside the chest,
To fly into the wild blue sky:
To have, to see, to build, to teach, to hold, to fly.
I do not feel your truth because I envision you a static being,
Even one that can change.
You are not my mother, not my father, none of these nouns;
You are the verbs of your life, your dreams, your quests,
And I can be these verbs only by living.
I can know you only through myself.

So I hold a photo of you
In your white, child's dress
On the steps of the old church,
And I look at your other daughter:
You look so alike, and yet her eyes
Will cast a different shadow,
Will open in a different way,
Will see a different eternity.

"Danke."

--Megan Morris, meikundayo@yahoo.com