A week before at least all developed world countries began to celebrate the day, I was introduced to the concept of death. The finality had passionately been kept away as taboo from any type of discussion in my family. When at the age of 48, my mother died on her older brother’s day of birth, May 7th, I have learned. In a childlike innocence at the age of 25, I concluded her death to mean a life-prolonging gift for my uncle. The same dearest man – closer to me than my father in numerous and incomparable ways, whose dedicated protection and devoted guidance I wrapped around myself like a security blanket to last much longer beyond March 28th of this year, is no longer. And the childlike innocence finds me still at an age a mere few months short of 60. With my plane ticket intact, one I finally managed to get after 7 long years of self-imposed separation, I was to hug and kiss him. The last breath cannot be scheduled, right?
So, I am left with the will to continue to write. As I have done earlier this April for my publisher’s monthly book project. I am especially thankful to him this time, for not having limited us, the contributing authors to circle around the theme of Mother’s Day. For each of my three poem contributions leaves much to think about outside that idea frame. The one I am sharing with you today is no exception. I want to hope that you will grant me your thoughts on it.
lions and ants
we like to hunt
to attain gain obtain remain
in eternal sharp-fanged hunger pain
not at all unlike the hero of Walt Mason
he put himself on a quest for a hungry lion one day
its mauling left him alive yet merely undead
forty-seven gashes wreaked his mutilated head
he wore his scars with beaming pride along with his fame
the lion thus became sacred for his until-then-modest frame
on one new day he rested atop a mound of ants
a million bites all over him that was the claim
he is said to have never since been the same
this tale is not told only once upon a time
it roars in us all at the first sight of worldly ills
while the overpowering ones meet our sword and armor
worn out small agonies slaughter our resilience in thrills
piercing bloodless our spirit and valor at their prime
© hülya n. yılmaz, April 2015
“lions and ants” will appear in the May 2015 issue of The Year of the Poet by Inner Child Press, Ltd.
hülyaswritings 