These are linked poems created week by week for a year, inspired by the book No Choice But To Follow, and the poets therein who did it first.

Friday 14 November 2014

November #2

The World They've Created Comes To A Full Stop

The day my daughter saw
that I did not know what might live
inside a basketball,
and my impatient reply
of 'I don't know, maybe fairies'
sealed my fate.
I was no longer her goddess,
and she turned to the outside world
to see who might ascend the throne.
Friends' mothers, her grandmother, teachers
all failing that steep set of steps
sooner or later,
so Britney Spears and the Spice Girls
adorned her bedroom walls,
and she chanted nightly:
'Oops, I did it again'
while my bath water reverberated in time
to their backbeat songs.
I was never again offered the throne or sceptre,
but deity light shone upon me briefly,
when she had her first baby,
and I was the only one
who could rock him to sleep.

— Helen Patrice


2 comments:

  1. A beautiful poem Helen. And your description is so true, even for an aunt who has been around her lovely niece since babyhood.

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