Your Legacy Must Be Both Love and Fear

April 8, 2018

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. Since trees, plants, and flowers are about to bloom, this week’s theme is bloom as a metaphor.

Today’s poem is about passing on the genetic tendency for breast cancer.

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

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Your legacy must be both love and fear.

I know that when you died, you feared for me.

The family curse you carried in your breast

Was not a gift you wanted to pass on.

But fear of it, just like my love for you,

Must linger in my heart, unwelcome guest!

And as I weep for your too early death,

I also can hear rumblings of my own.

Ah, Mother! We are linked like paper dolls,

A line of little cutouts in a row.

I see my clearest memories in my mirror

And feel your anguish bloom beneath my breast.

For this, my love for you is more, not less.

In our misfortune there's a common grace:

For me, in that you must have grieved for me;

For you, in what you knew I’d feel for you.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/yourle.html. For more poems health and sickness, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/healthpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Bloom as a Metaphor

April 2: Fifty-Three

April 3: Stephen

April 4: Treat Yourself to All the Best of Life

April 5: You Are the Rose About to Bloom

April 6: Flowers Flourish in Their Proper Clime

April 7: I Wish for You One Thing, and That Is Love

April 8: Your Legacy Must Be Both Love and Fear