Surviving Love

It is possible to drown your children in love,

To immerse them so deeply in your caring

That they become oblivious to the deep

   Water of life.

Our daughters learned how to swim, to compete,

Literally, in meets with other children,

So we never felt we were sheltering them

   From reality.

Yet the lessons we had taught left them floating

On the illusion that their parents were, yes,

Immortal. Thus it was with my own parents

   Whose deaths submerged me

In those dreaded waters, sunken in darkness

Of an engulfing mourning. The deepest descent

Of that submergence matched the crest of the love

   They had given me.

So how can we place our daughters in that same

Black trench? It is not a choice any parent

Makes, yet since we have taught our children how to swim

   We hope they’ll survive.