A Gross of Egg Shells
The Sequel [Seven poems are selected.]
(Twelve scenarios of adolescent development, based on the lack of love, understanding and stability experienced in childhood.)
From this awkward age into theirs.
Sadness splintered twelve ways
Goes forward to metamorphosis and swan song.
Impatient bones bursting through skin
Fly into the arms of the companionable day
And relapse with hardly a pang to the loved
Objects of childhood. Souls unknown
To any fostering Muse mutely hail
The incisiveness of deeds, of natural mastery
And proofs of physical and sexual prowess.
Hearts slowed to a gradgrind conformity
Now burst blood-vessels to avoid catalepsy
And to find a self in the big, wide world.
If young'uns don't sublimate self-proving attitudes
Through sport, vocational or martial training,
Hiding their humaner image behind uniform,
They may toughen by being able to bond empathically,
Capitalizing on parents' soft-hearted investment.
Theirs would be the body of trusting relationships
With parents, peers and extra-parental grown-ups,
From which they draw the sinews of their strength
To get through and to suss life. Carrying wealth in themselves,
They may just resist the cynic's gritty realism . . .