If only you had not had the child

and your body was healthy,

what wonders would have been in store

for you and your honorable husband?

How would your mother have felt without

the platinum blonde baby boy bouncing

in her lap or your dad’s smiling eyes

gazing at his offspring?

If only you had not had the illness,

the cancer, the accident, the divorce,

the problem that changed everything.

If only…

But it happened as it did and you go your

way as we go ours – into the wilderness –

into the seasons of the sun.