An Old Recipe

Almost two years after our mother’s passing, we found a poem she wrote 50 years ago.  She is still teaching us about what is important in life today. My sister just found it in an old cookbook from the sixties. Our brother thought we should share it:

In this world we live in

There are so many emotions

So powerful on the surface

But so much turmoil as beneath the sea

Just as the ocean

The waves rush to meet the shore

As each generation

Can do better than the one before

Time is the answer

To realize our fate

To love and be loved

Is our only date

What passes doesn’t matter

To those who stay the shore

They know only the surface

And think of nothing that has gone before

A bird in the garden

Goes swiftly by

Only to be seen again

By someone else’s eye

One does not have to travel

To ride on elephants in a safari

Or to Bloomfield Hills

Or witness the rains in Soho

Or the grapevines in Madrid

To try to know yourself

Not to judge others

Or search for mansions in the sky

We are given to the Earth

Just to love and be loved

That is our fate ‘til we die.

– Marilyn Smith King