Remembering a woman 40 years
ago, who birthed a daughter long-desired,
and then confessed to me, voice choked with tears,
she couldn’t love the baby as required…
It wasn’t that she’d harm the child – no –
but deep attachment didn’t fill her soul.
Two years of challenge later let her know,
with baby number 2, love true and whole.

I wonder if that aberration’s rare.
In fact I can imagine such a mom,
alike in bleakness, absent honest care,
responsible but apt to raise a palm
of distance in the place of an embrace,
bereft and sore, an amputee of grace.