~ by Harriet Sams
Why oh why
Mummy, oh wise one,
please tell me this:
the animals I see
all around us are having babies
in the bright abundance of Spring
and we humans can have them
any day we want.
why, oh wise one?
Because, oh observant one,
there is food for mother
and baby in Spring so that
the gods of the future are satisfied,
the worm is sacrificed for the blackbird
See! His beak is full
lamb and bird,
badger and hedgehog
No, it’s ok to be sad to see
how the worm wriggles and strains
in the grasp of impending death
terror
but it is all preordained;
that is what Spring is all about
some die so others live
But humans-
to answer your question,
we learned long ago to harness more than Spring’s bounty and
so we could take food
and preserve it
like mummies and bog bodies
for us to satiate our earthly needs
now we grow or fly
what we want from
where we want
any day of the week
Our fecundity knows no
human limitation but our
cycles of moon days and
this power has terrified us
generation by generation
so we make it Spring whenever our offspring births
for terror of starvation
So mummy, oh wise one,
when we cannot fly raspberries from chile
nor potatoes from Russia
will then all babies be born in April,
like the lambs and the chicks?
And all our dead still die in the Spring?
She sees some depths in this time of story and meaning,
This observant one.