If I Am A Gentleman By An Ethical Life Poem by Danny Draper

Homo sapiens; male, man; female, woman.
A woman had four sons after three miscarriages
And complications leaving one quarter of one ovary.
Child of the depression mother died when five or six
Father, share farmer, dirt poor, provided skills and labour.
Child farmed out to aunty and raped by uncle.
Never recovered from losing her mother,
Older sister had fourteen children.
Grew up poor but did not know different,
Wealth of family.
Taught those sons to respect women.
Always loved and gave to her husband.
Her husband never loved another.
Always living at the edge of poverty,
curses of the poor and their easy habits:
Lack of education and its opportunities,
nicotine, alcohol and gambling - pokies,
Always just surviving
often nourishing ignorance and hardened monochrome views.
Always working and sacrificing no view to glass ceiling
No aspiration to inhabit boardrooms or dwellings leering into the harbour
Hoping to attain fulfilment from materialism
And from deluded self-satisfaction and conceit, disregarding
All others of alternate views:
The great invisible, terra incognita.
This women did not have the luxury to despise her country
Or to flee and disparage it for its own good from afar,
Only the every day to live the life given
To carry on with dignity, strength and determination
To nurture, care, love and work hard every day and never be lazy.
This woman was a role model to men,
And by the powers of her genuine and tenacious spirit recognised as a lady.
This woman was not suppressed by the yoke of a male corporate construct
And was always a respected equal among men,
But like so many, life and poverty, co-conspirators kept her duly restrained.
This woman taught her sons to be gentlemen and to live without violence,
mindful of the needs of others, to work hard to achieve, to live without greed,
With no agenda other than all men and women are equal,
Assumingly to achieve a better society.
Through times of impoverishment and adversity
This woman was strength.
And when the end came swiftly she was scared but gracious
and with dignity and calm acceptance, passed to he mother.
If I am a gentleman by an ethical life,
It will be largely by the best qualities of that lady.


11/7/2010