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I am more father than mother,
fighting patriarchal dragons in workaday worlds,
paying bills, deferring dreams
for the sake of children
I too seldom see,
all in the name of women’s progress
with its consequent breakdown in care.
My husband lies snuggly asleep upstairs,
clueless, untrained to be mother,
yet unwilling to learn,
while I cannot sleep,
wondering how long we can last
before the dragon dance sears me in its kind grin
and my daughters wither from lack of maternal care.
So here I am, at 5 a.m., alone,
spooning out the same cookies
my mother taught me to make
when I was my daughter’s age,
for a bake sale later today at her school,
treasuring, in spite of all the hard-won battles,
this small continuity of care.
Yet wondering, too, when men
will rise up to be like women,
loving without counting the cost
or desiring top billing of fame
just because it’s the human thing to do
to challenge demonic dragons that hold all enslaved
with kind cookies of defiant continual care.