Perfect purity doesn’t persist, even exist--
Not even in children.
Who have to learn to grow a soul,
Share their toys,
Not emotionally blackmail,
And understand death and that pain to others is real.

Still I feel as if my own childhood’s eyes
Wouldn’t recognize, wide and impressionable
As watercolor lilies,
The woman with eyes fogged
From overpopulation of troubles.
Green grass to jaded.

Self-doubt blooms like the flower
It would be ashamed to be.
Rushing up like a seed that feeds
In the darkness, in, perversely, the gut.
Unknown in youth, it towers,
Then plateaus, in ego.

Vines of avarice mustn’t be allowed
To grasp for the old selfishness.
Placidity can’t be tranquilly accepted
When it slips cozily into the bed to invasively smother
hard-wished-for dreams and hard-won values.

Go the hearty and fertile ground in the middle,
For there we all have our hope.