A Mother’s Day Lament

With Apologies to Edgar Allen Poe and the Raven

Mother’s Day 2014

 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious mem’ry of my home

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my brain’s back dome

‘Tis some dreaming thing’, I muttered, tapping at my brain’s back dome

Just buttered crackers, all alone.

 

Rolling over for more shuteye, dreamt of Mississippi mud-pie

Images of fun and antics hidden from my Mother back at home

While I tossed and turned in sleeping, miscellany hi-jinks creeping

More and more came bubbling seeping, seeping in a frothy foam

Too much pizza before bed, to myself I sleepily said giving me this midnight groan

I’m to blame, its mine to own

 

All was normal – then recalling, one memory that’s so appalling,

Sweat and trembling seized me fully, body, soul and mind it owned

Fearless in my youthful antics, or exploits – its all semantics

There I trembled truly frantic, frantic like a half-crazed gnome

Words my Mother used to say, to bring an end to fun and play and draw my deepest aching groan

Just wait until your Dad gets home

 

How I’d start and spit and sputter, what a wretched thing to mutter

There’s no recourse a stripling has, when this at last by Mothers’ grim intone

Naught but dreadful waiting terror, for each and every youthful error

Nothing could be more unfair, “unfair!” I sobbed between each wrenching groan

But no reprieve could be extorted regardless cherub face contorted – the sentence was alas all set in stone

Just wait until your Dad gets home!

 

No secret weapon forged by science has stopped more acts of young defiance

No means of squelching fun has ever matched the force of this alone

The rue of young creative flair, grand plans and schemes laid flat and bare

Devastated keen ideas, ideas when old we’d not condone

But at the moment seized our brains and swept our minds like monsoon rains that held the germ of fancied joys – overthrown

Just wait until your Dad gets home

 

And now we know the secret means by which our Moms have often saved the world

When long unused we dream and hope the words have from their hearts and minds full flown

And then there comes that dreadful day, when oblivious in devious play

Unleashed and slung in power, power by the world unknown

With Sinaitic declarative awe those lips that kiss our booboos say the words that make us writhe and groan

Just wait until your Dad get home!

 

And so the story has gone on, re-acted and performed in every human age

Methinks each girl who witnessed it, embosoms it in secret till they’re grown

Till comes the day their progeny, caught in an impish playful spree

They catch in mid-stream in mischievy, mischievy like igniting some cologne

And rise at last to seize the phrase with exasperated hands on hips imperiously intone –

Just wait until your Dad gets home!