My mother taught me that, those afternoons
we killed the vines so that the trees might live.
A sprayer's not as good as one who prunes.
Theft robs both of joys honest trade could give.
The tuning's not as pleasant as the tunes.
Even God requires repentance, to forgive.
This moral judgment makes a man or woman,
created in God's image, fully human.
It's not subjective, as some try to claim.
The world's always agreed on moral laws.
The mind perceives things' rightness or their shame
with an agreement that the mind o'erawes.
All humans always will a traitor blame
and, if they don't, a brain defect's the cause.
Up to this present day we've always had
the sense that "amorality" is mad.
We women weave the weeds that humans wear,
though men can weed a garden just as well;
Rhus glabra was my father's cross to bear,
yet almost every year its venom fell
on Mother, vulnerable because fair,
and, thoughtless child, I never tried to tell
why Mother shared the orchard work with me:
for private conversation, I now see.
True was her teaching; wisdom in the word,
the very words that bind: wise, woman, wit,
weave, word, with, weed, we, will: like a songbird
that through the orchard's trees may sing and flit,
words chime in background; sometimes may be heard
a meaning deeper than the sound of it.
We choose pain not because we want to suffer,
because 'tween pain and children we're the buffer.
So pass away the vines none will regret.
So pass away my mother's fourscore years
whose work, all now agree, was not done yet,
whose loss left those who knew her in our tears.
Yet bravely, merrily, her course she set--
"Hey, Death! Come, if you dare!"--she had no fears.
She ran to meet her loved ones, some years lost;
So may we all run; One has paid the cost.
The fire burned out, and by its ashes sat,
next morning, spring's first yellow butterfly,
to catch the sun's heat spreading wings out flat,
still needing every ray to flutter by;
if, wind-chilled, he'd been trapped where he was at
and I had caught him, he'd not have been shy
but made use of my skin's warmth and sweat's salt.
He is a filthy beast. That's not his fault.
Though right and wrong exist outside the mind
and are not judged by us, but we by them,
a perfect view of truth we cannot find.
Not holding it does not disprove a gem.
In greater or in less degree we're blind
yet we can see, if not all leaves, the stem:
who'd kiss, or who would kill, the butterfly?
Nature's a great salve to the moral eye.
We daily choose between the wrong and right
(and sometimes more than one on either side,
in more or less degree: words merely trite,
strong, weak, or words completely falsified?
Though there are shades and colors in the light
from dark's existence best not try to hide.
We never should imagine that it's clever
from moral judgments ever thought to sever.
The vines have served some purpose as they burned.
Their ashes hold a little warmth, even now.
And Mother served some purposes: we learned
much from her, all who knew her now avow.
The moment, too, served purpose, being turned
into Bad Poetry (perhaps for Plough?).
All things connect. All things are not the same.
True moral judgment may be being's aim.
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