You Know Nothing! Poem by Sara Militello

You Know Nothing!

You were my love a time ago
who often in frivolity fled
to the arms of others each in a row
returning only when the wind
blew you back to in my comfort rest.
Each of your subsequent quests
became yet another unintended jest.

Recalling my pain and the fool I was
this sounds a rhetorical refrain:
Have you ever cried the night away
knowing a love astray
wiping the scene from your sight
as dawn shed its mournful night
letting only forgiveness stay?

Have you ever been forced
by your own concern
to watch as your love slides
into its death knell
unable to its downfall quell
as you struggle to stem a tide of despair
almost too deep to bear?

Have you ever seen a child through
every need it dared you to measure,
your joy gaining speed only in its smiles
of pleasure?

To know nothing of striving or loving;
of joyously knowing a life made of giving,
each seed of love planted in essence a wooing,
to know nothing of tending a garden;
-hear it sighing-
or see a child through each stage
of it striving
one knows nothing!

Of you, this I have come to suspect
and most painfully regret:
You know nothing of life
‘cause you know nothing of sharing
or giving; of striving or loving...

January 1991