Pain Is A Forcing Sieve That Turns

I Don't Even Remember What Mother And I Quarreled About: It Is A Continual Quarrel That Began When I Reached Puberty.

Now That I Am In My Forties, She [my Mother] Tells Me I'm Beautiful; Now That I Am In My Forties, She Sends Me Presents And We Have The Long, Personal And Even Remarkably Honest Phone Calls I Always Wanted So Intensely I Forbade Myself To Imagine Them. How Strange. Perhaps Shaw Was Correct And If We Lived To Be Several Hundred Years Old, We Would Finally Work It All Out. I Am Deeply Grateful. With My Poems, I Finally Won Even My Mother. The Longest Wooing Of My Life.

Long Hair Is Considered Bohemian, Which May Be Why I Grew It, But I Keep It Long Because I Love The Way It Feels, Part Cloak, Part Fan, Part Mane, Part Security Blanket.

Every Baby Born Unloved, Unwanted, Is A Bill That Will Come Due In Twenty Years With Interest, An Anger That Must Find A Target, A Pain That Will Beget Pain. A Decade Downstream A Child Screams, A Woman Falls, A Synagogue Is Torched, A Firing Squad Is Summoned, A Button Is Pushed And The World Burns.

This Life Is A War We Are Not Yet Winning For Our Daughters' Children. Don't Do Your Enemies' Work For Them. Finish Your Own.