Moms can surprise you...

One of the great things about getting older is that you start to see your parents as people. They aren't the heavies anymore, keeping you from everything you want to do most in life, they aren't the only thing keeping you from going to that all-night party, (never happened over here:-)) they are honest-to-goodness flesh and blood people. They make mistakes, they learn, they have a past. They were "people" long before their kids were around, and personally, I really enjoy getting to know "Sharon" the person versus "Sharon" the Mom.

I can't even remember how it came up, but somehow we got on the subject of poetry. I started telling her that I had two favourites that stuck with me, and she surprised me by naming one of her own. "We had to memorize it." She told me. I asked her to look it up and send it to me and later she would tell me "it all came rushing back." as she found it on the net.

Mine:

     Five Ways To Kill A Man

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

Edwin Brock

I wasn't surprised when Mom told me she didn't care for it. She truly believes the best of everyone so I'm not surprised that the topic didn't sit well. I told her that it held up with the way things were today and sadly, she couldn't argue.

   The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

I wish I could say I've lived my life this way, and in some ways, in some moments, it's a big SOMETIMES but not nearly as much as I'd like...

And finally, here's her choice. Simple, charming, and if you close your eyes you can see a child playing amongst the pillows...


The Land of Counterpane
by Robert Louis Stevenson

When I was sick and lay a-bed, I had two pillows at my head, And all my toys beside me lay, To keep me happy all the day. And sometimes for an hour or so I watched my leaden soldiers go, With different uniforms and drills, Among the bed-clothes, through the hills; And sometimes sent my ships in fleets All up and down among the sheets; Or brought my trees and houses out, And planted cities all about. I was the giant great and still That sits upon the pillow-hill, And sees before him, dale and plain, The pleasant land of counterpane.