Empty Basket

In many it will rise like yeast in bread,

It will place happy songs in their head.

Not me, not I. I clutch an empty basket

No yard eggs to collect, no need to ask it.

I am not picking berries to let ripen

To press into pie and bake in the oven.

And mourn not for me as you wish to think

I gleefully drain water from the sink.

For many the clouds brew into soft rain

But here this would only bring horrid pain.

I wish not to flood my gardens with bloom,

I hold and clutch my hollow womb

Happy and content to sip tea

Beneath a fruit barren tree.

And in the quiet I will read many a book

Without so much as a remorseful look

At another life that may have been

Far it was never my goal to spin

Wool into fiber and that into life

When I took his name and became wife.

And he too adores the gentle quiet

As enchanted as the day we met.

We seek not to build a nest and fill

It with eggs and trinkets to thrill,

Despite the demands and pressure

To carry on a name and assure

Others that the line does not end

Here where the tree forked in a bend.

But, alas these things do not matter

As we throw out the whisked batter.

Many others will throw it in to bake

But we simply do not want any cake.