the stairway of my life <br />has no gilded edge <br />rather tacks <br />and splinters <br />and boards torn up <br />and places with no carpet on the steps <br />with skinned knuckles <br />on bare feet <br />all the time <br />I've kept climbing <br />and reaching landings <br />and turning corners <br />slow going in the shadows <br />and where there has been no light <br />I keep blindly searching <br />failing and <br />getting up to start again <br />building my own loose menagerie <br />that might pass for a family on Sunday <br />if we don’t sit too far apart <br />and how I have envied lives <br />like yours who sustain that family stone <br />I'm nowhere to draw that strength <br />or support this poverty <br />of a life so left alone and though <br />your family that seems so scattered <br />still there’s a melody <br />links your parts <br />and I can see the song is written <br />on the rock that is your Mother <br />as she has hold your hearts<br /><br />Robert Combs<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-family-3/
