Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child Poem by Val Morehouse

____version from a traditional slave spiritual,
circa 1860’s...



Shaking with the fierce fright of loneliness
at 2 a.m. Staccato cries rise and flock like night
birds from your swathed blanket.

I drift to your crib still half-wrapped in a nightgown
of sleep. Again I will bend and lift you against my heart.
Wrapped together, we fold into the old wooden rocker,

the one with that special creak in its rock,
adding its moving downbeat to my drumming heart.
In sympathy my own voice breathes out notes,

singing into the quivering dark,
“Sometimes I feel like a leaf on a stream.
Sometimes... I feel, like a leaf on a stream,

such a long, lo-o-ng way-ay from home.” As your cries
hush and cease, your small face searches mine,
drawn by the spirit inside this old melody.

Between each word your sighs brush my ear as the
moment fills with a lullaby of trust between us.
And you come home to me again to sleep without fear.