What it must be like to be an angel <br />or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner. <br /> <br />The last time we go to bed good, <br />they are there, lying about darkness. <br /> <br />They dandle us once too often, <br />these friends who become our enemies. <br /> <br />Suddenly one day, their juniors <br />are as old as we yearn to be. <br /> <br />They get wrinkles where it is better <br />smooth, odd coughs, and smells. <br /> <br />It is grotesque how they go on <br />loving us, we go on loving them <br /> <br />The effrontery, barely imaginable, <br />of having caused us.And of how. <br /> <br />Their lives: surely <br />we can do better than that. <br /> <br />This goes on for a long time.Everything <br />they do is wrong, and the worst thing, <br /> <br />they all do it, is to die, <br />taking with them the last explanation, <br /> <br />how we came out of the wet sea <br />or wherever they got us from, <br /> <br />taking the last link <br />of that chain with them. <br /> <br />Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling, <br />to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.<br /><br />William Morris Meredith Jr.<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/parents-2/
