First of all, I know nothing about
Raising boys. I am a mother
Of girls, lithe and soft, cruel
To others like them, but never to boys.

Boys are foreigners, free
Of this mother’s facts, unfamiliar.

So, now what? Here’s this boy
Blood of my girl, born into my reach
Hurrying to arrive - so different from his mother
Who reluctantly breathed, after sliding
Free of me, who held on, too.

Every day I marvel at my girl as she
raises her boy, raises him up to see
the world she cannot enter,
a world she defies to see so that he will be safe.

She lives now in a world I cannot enter,
Mother of a man.
I stand on the other side, holding the door wide
for her return. I stand holding my heart
wide for her sorrow
when he pours out onto the plains of
the others’ world, ready,
raised up as he is by her.