Family Crosses Poem by John Sensele

What adults children grow into remains God's best kept secret
That keeps families on tenterhooks
Wondering whether hatching yields a brat, gnat or an egret
Whose demeanour adds pride, heaps disrepute or honours families' brag books.

What adults children grow into emerges starkly at puberty
When true colours concealed in childhood emerge
To delight a family or to unleash livid liberty
Whose impact and intensity leave parents on the uncertainty edge.

What adults children grow into seldom traverses a naïve straight line
Which amateurs can't foresee
Until rebellion and carrion queer the dream design
Fiction dangled on their cream canvas with neither peace nor mercy.

What adults children grow into seldom adheres to a simplistic script
That lives only in figments of the imagination
Entertained, maintained, retained and sustained in a calmly kept
Compartment, cocoon or cockpit that spurns promotion, self-satisfaction, ovation and oration.