A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.
— Samuel Butler
A mother’s basic instincts start and stop with being there
And everything revolves around the children in her care:
The raising up, the rearing, the protecting and preparing.
She just keeps keeping on, with evolution in the air:
She gets no formal training anywhere;
Her nest is made, her eggs are laid and all she does is care.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
and the devil’s left behind.
She saw her mother do this from a different point of view;
The world was all around her then and everything was new:
The view itself, the air, the grass of green, the sky of blue,
The miles of horizon and a nagging hunger too,
And suddenly her mother coming through.
Nobody really told her what to do.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
and the devil’s left behind.
And now she is the mother, got it all down to an art.
She’s facing danger daily, but she plays her precious part:
The watch, the cry, the flash of passion, every stop and start
Instinctively designed and yet distinctively so smart,
And even when things seem to fall apart
She takes the stage and plays it from her heart.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
and the devil’s left behind.
She cries out loud staccatos in a stuttered anti-phlegm
And then she starts performing her sublime dramatic gem:
The stumbled pace, the broken wing, the red beneath her hem,
To lead her looming enemies astray, away from them.
Some folks would automatically condemn
The way the mother has abandoned them.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details...
This is my rhyme for Mother’s Day, a silly killdeer song
With no connection to the mothers I’ve known for so long:
The mother of my children, and my mother too, are strong
And not inclined to cry or play the fool when things go wrong,
And yet if evil ever came along
I guess it never stayed around for long.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
and the devil’s left behind.
(The author of this platitude nobody seems to know;
It’s randomly attributed to many people though:
To Flaubert, Nietzche, Einstein, even Michelangelo,
Le Corbusier, John Ruskin, or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
No one is certain but the truth will show,
Beyond all words and birds, everything we need to know.
You’ve got your theories and I’ve got mine
But God is in the details
and the devil’s left behind.)
from Thirty Birds
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