Clients

The gaggle of wives and moms
who gather for coffee and control
rationing out belonging
like a PTA match card
The more you buy the more
 the ante is raised
of inner circle harboring

The plain, small, only parent
averting eyes when you speak
hides a vast canyon of kindness
and dutifulness greater
than a congregation of priests
Lavishing her sapling like son with
the love she denies for herself

The sweets are just that-
oozing pink affection
for each other, others and their daughter
who possesses a steely perseverance
despite the hothouse flower demeanor-
and she is only six!
A majestic magnolia she will become

The one demanding most service
 and special treatment,
 which she truly relishes,
reigns like a lioness
 grooming her cubs to greatness
 with Buddhas's serenity and conviction
She is a rock on shaky ground

The dashing athlete, renowned professional
passionate artist, devoted family man
who gives freely of his time, his tenderness
his multitude of gifts,
perhaps because he is so golden
The tarnish of spending himself to ruin,
affirms his specimen's rarity

The woman who blazes in and sieves
sunlight in dark corners,
 gathers a firestorm of reaction,
shares her wounds without compunction
simultaneously offering touching affection
to your thirsty soul
Will have a tragic end- remain forever young

All of them I have happened to, decades at my work,
tending a garden of accidental plotting
 willing to coax fruit on grafted trees
 cursed with blight
and a spring that came so late
that harvest skipped the gathering,
fleshed out instead the stark glory of winter

Only I was the client, spreading
on their therapist's couch
year after year, healing
my inner child and mother alike
and all the gifts changed
hands, twice blessed,
in the destiny of connection