November 24, 2007

• DELIBERATE BARRENNESS

  Yesterday's post reminded me of a conversation I had with a young lady in my high school classes my second year of teaching (at a local Christian school). She declared that she didn't ever want to have children because it would keep her from becoming who she really was. I wrote this poem after that conversation. It's obviously not about people who can't have children -- that's from God -- but about those who can but refuse, for selfish reasons.

  Of Her Who Desired No Children

  Before my years could multiply,
  I chose to make their center me;
  I saw I might be hindered by
  My own fertility.

  I felt the rise within me and
  I knew I was a spring, and yet
  I wished to feel no demand
  From what I might beget.

  I stopped the flow; I'd be a spring
  Without it. Now I weep because
  I didn't know I killed the thing
  That made me what I was.

  I cannot, now my years have fled,
  Say without tears, to any man,
  That I have been a riverbed|
  Where water never ran.

  A fountain, lying deep in dust;
  A channel by no current laved;
  A ground that gives no harvest, just
  The barrenness I'd craved.

  For years I kept me blind, nor knew
  What I had missed, or (what was worse)
  That I had fallen victim to
  My own eternal curse.

  --Wes Callihan
  May 1986

  • 12:55 pm
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