Seems ages past though scarcely ten,
When silence echoed in the quiet nursery,
Void of any cry or call for Mama.
And any infant I should see, was not my own,
Who recently had come and quickly gone.
The long-stemmed rose–the gift,
A token of Motherhood
Was mockery to my being
Who aspired to the grandest height of all–Mother.
But lo, the years produced the child my heart desired.
And now I see within the rosebush
The new-formed dewy buds,
And overlook the thorn
That seemed so sharp and painful
On other days like this.
With house and arms and thoughts no longer empty,
There is a deluge of the once longed for dependent cries of “Mama!”
And now the garden rose I see as me,
With room to grow and flourish,
And send its roots deep into the soil
To stand amid the worldly blasts,
And turn toward the sun
To drink the heaven-sent strength
To make me equal to the title–Mama.
