Ode To Lost Motherhood Poem by Charl JF Cilliers

As I travel down this long and wintry road,
thinking of your lost motherhood, dear friend,
how can I fully resurrect you in an ode
that remembers not a beginning, but an end.

The small coffin of swaddling clothes you should
have held with different love and tenderness
was mourned by you and strangers where they stood,
each in an incongruous starched white surplice.

How often you have told me you recall
no instant of those endless moments there,
the pale corpse in a shell of frailty, so small,
and not a breath or sigh heard anywhere.

As I travel down this long and wintry road,
thinking of motherhood, my dear, lost friend,
how can I resurrect you in an ode
that remembers a beginning that was an end.