Motherless Child

"Motherless Child"

By Meshach Terfa

Anytime I look at my mother’s face

I see her dilemma staring in my face

And in my ears a voice that had been

Of me the only thing standing between

Her in the midst of life buried and unseen

And sometimes I feel like a motherless child

Sunk into the dungeon of sorrow’s orchard

When a mother bestows a name upon a child

It reveals her hope: my mother named me Terfa

which means God knows; but sometimes I feel like a

Motherless child, a long way away from my home

Rioting with the memories of my mother’s face

And much less so those of my father’s face

But my tears

Are not fears

My hands that couldn’t reach

To caress the love in each

Of my mother’s heart that teaches

Endurance in the face of life’s stitches

I can see her smile shielding

The burden of my pain, unyielding

To the assault of my wails

Snowing without healing trails

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

As my mother said she will never ever hide

Nor leave but will always be there for me

Where Are You Now? Just look at me

And you will see my pain

As I daily strive to strain

Life’s coffee which I must serve

Whose taste I may not deserve

To take and so live to reserve

The love that I long to preserve

For you who love me passed the pains

Permanently dripping from life’s chains

That may effortlessly edge into a homicide

It is not hocus-pocus or pilgrimage to suicide

That I sometimes chess the option in the noose

With my neck as its guest but I benignly choose

To undo anything that might uproot

The hope of me dismembering the root

Of your tears for having a prime child infanticide

This is not a poem about any other child

Than I who feel like a motherless child.