In Search of Mother

I cannot help but look for you

It is driven

Like some primeval unfinished business

I look and strive for you

Yet knowing its futility

And baffled at this conflict with logic

What is this driving emotion that defies reason?

Sometimes that familiar dream is resurrected

And I perceive you in some form

In the elderly lady at a bus stop who smiles and calls me "dear"

In the casual friendly concern of a colleague

In the eye contact and warm smile of a passer by

In the smell of freshly laundered clothes

or in a hug from one of my children

I think of you

and what you should have been

and my need screams at me once again

This yearning never leaves me

Occasionally dormant

or sometimes gnawing at my heart and mind

but constantly beckoning at my senses

With the distant remembrance of

childish tortured memories

haunting my mind still

This child still lives within me

in the archives of my emotions

Rising from the depths sometimes

and screaming her presence

and insatiable need for rescue

longing for that tender halo of love to lean against

that will not abandon once again

Her agenda futile but unrelenting still