I Do Not Wish to Take Your Mother's Place

June 24, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since many public schools hold their graduation ceremonies this week, this week’s theme is graduation.

Today’s poem is a graduation poem from a stepmother.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

I do not wish to take your mother's place,

And yet my pride and pleasure are no less.

You may not be the daughter of my flesh,

But you are still the daughter of my heart.

I know my very presence in your life

Can't help but to remind you of the pain

And anger of your parents' separation.

And yet my only purpose here is love.

Stepmothers and stepdaughters are a pair

Created both by joy and by disaster.

We did not choose each other, but were chosen

By love and by the anguish of love's end.

But we can choose to love each other well,

Accepting fortune's gift with unfeigned grace.

Know as you step forth this graduation:

You have my love as long as I have life.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/idono5.html. For more graduation poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/graduationpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Graduation.

June 20: Moving On from Middle School

June 21: Friends in High School Are Forever Young

June 22: Graduation Is a Time2

June 23: Graduation Isn’t Gradual

June 24: I Do Not Wish to Take Your Mother’sPlace