Ungrateful Heart

It hit me today,
Making meatballs and meatloaf,
Bearing with the echoes of remembered times.
What if your mother had been someone else?

A disease only 5 out of 6 billion people had.
Experiments. Tests. That would never end.
Can you imagine that one moment, upside down
On a contraption torture device?

With no food, water, no ice…
Can you imagine if that had not been only once?
The scar…the nightmarish haunt of Doctor’s cold fingers
And colder scientist heart…

Scientific tests, sure for scientific remedies
But a child’s heart is touched and trembles in this maze.
Cold and alone, but triumphant, motherhood sang out
With mercy on the little one-trembling,

Unable to read, think…
That was a sin.
Let her alone.

And perhaps others scorned her,
Perhaps others thought her flawed,
But one night in a hospital, another night in the cold bed,
Life may not be Good, but it’s better than there…

So my reluctant heart accepts
The triumph of one flawed being
That saved another from the Labyrinth in life.