Children's Poems XI

Children's Poems XI These are poems for children and poems about children and their mothers, fathers, grandmother, grandfathers and extended families. To My Child, Unborn by Michael R. Burch for Jeremy How many were the nights, enchanted with despair and longing, when dreams recanted returned with a restless yearning, and the pale stars, burning, cried out at me to remember one night... long ere the September night when you were conceived. Oh, then, if only I might have believed that the future held such mystery as you, my child, come unbidden to me and to your mother, come to us out of a realm of wonder, come to us out of a faery clime... If only then, in that distant time, I had somehow known that this day were coming, I might not have despaired at the raindrops drumming sad anthems of loneliness against shuttered panes; I might not have considered my doubts and my pains so carefully, so cheerlessly, as though they were never-ending. If only then, with the starlight mending the shadows that formed in the bowels of those nights, in the gussets of storms that threatened till dawn as though never leaving, I might not have spent those long nights grieving, lamenting my loneliness, cursing the sun for its late arrival. Now, a coming dawn brings you unto us, and you shall be ours, as welcome as ever the moon or the stars or the glorious sun when the nighttime is through and the earth is enchanted with skies turning blue. Transition by Michael R. Burch for Jeremy With his cocklebur hugs and his wet, clinging kisses like a damp, trembling thistle catching, thwarting my legs— he reminds me that life begins with the possibility of rapture. Was time this deceptive when my own childhood begged one last moment of frolic before bedtime's firm kisses— when sleep was enforced, and the dark window ledge waited, impatient, to lure or to capture the bright edge of morning within a clear pane? Was the sun then my ally—bright dawn's greedy fledgling? With his joy he reminds me of joys long forgotten, of play's endless hours till the haggard sun sagged and everything changed. I gather him up and we trudge off to bed. Keywords/Tags: children's poems, children, child, childhood, boy, girl, boyhood, girlhood, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, family, families, sister, brother, unborn, future, doubts, pains, hugs, kisses, rapture, bed, bedtime, sleep, joy, sun, son, father-son