Heart, Stone

Whenever Jenny would ask her mother some day,

“Mummy, where has my daddy gone?”

“He’s away for a few days,” she’d always say,

As she looked away, her tender heart forlorn.

There were times when she and Jenny

To this one gloomy place would ride.

Jenny would sit in the car each time

While her mother alone would go inside.

And when she would return from inside after a while,

That sadness on her face would have again found its way.

And then looking at her dear child, she’d faintly smile.

Why she went there – Jenny never asked, she’d never say.

Then one day, when they had once again come to that place,

As young Jenny sat in the car, all silent and alone,

She wondered what wiped the smile off her mother’s face,

And what inside made her lovely face so woe-begone.

Curiosity got the better of her,

And Jenny broke her silent resolve.

And so the place she did enter,

With a question in mind to solve.

And in that haunt of pervasive gloom,

Headstones were erected ‘cross the green;

Here rested those who had met their doom

But her dear mother was nowhere to be seen.

Jenny walked a little further, but slowly,

And in one secluded spot, where ‘twas darker,

She found her dear mother, all lonely,

Hunched over another grave marker.

At peace with the music of the wind’s sweet lullabies,

Her hands were stroking the cold unresponsive stone.

A single precious tear flowed from her sad green eyes,

And then it serpentined slowly down her cheekbone.

Then Jenny saw the headstone, standing tall,

And so then when her eyes read the very same,

Her heart sank and then the tears began to fall,

For on that stone was etched her father’s name.