POEMS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3853, 17 January 1928, Page 73

POEMS.

TT OUSEKEEPER Wanted. — Motherly J-jf- woman to look after three children. She has her freedom now to marry him, I have our children and a home to make To help them to forget the things they’ve known: The kind of home I had when I was small, With good-bye hugs when I went’ off to school, And cookies baked on rainy afternoons, And parties that we asked our playmates to. . . .

How can I give them that? It takes a ■woman

To make a home. I thought all women knew What children needed; but she never cared For anything but her own vanity. Not all the love I gave her woke in her An answering flame to warm this home

of ours. . . . Home? That needs a woman you can

trust! She wants him now because her beauty holds him; I know how long that lasts . . . My, God, I know! And little Judy has her mother’s eyes. . , How can I teach them to forget their mother ?

EXPERIENCED Woman wants Position as Housekeeper. She was the last of mine that needed me, And all her things are put in order now— Her husband’s folks are going to do the

rest. There’s Brother’s family that I helped

to raise, They’re married now and living far apart. I’m forty-eight, and ever since a child There’s been some one of mine. that needed me To fill a place that death or illness made. I used to think perhaps that I might

marry. Folks said, “ You’ll make some man a right smart wife.” And I was pretty, too, when I was young, But somehow I have never felt left out; There’s been so many homes I had a

share in, And births I watched and ageing folks I

tended, And children’s clothes I helped to make

and mend. I know —down in my heart —it’s not the

same, But' I was never one that cried and

clung. And now that I am free to stop and think, And plan a little for myself alone, I feel that there is still a place for me In strangers’ homes perhaps, and something new— Surprises maybe, hidden and forgot,

Because I couldn’t look for them before. . . . That may be foolish in a woman grown, But somehow that’s the way I’ve always felt—.

Like waking early on a sunny morning. —Marie Emilie Gilchrist, in Contempo-

rary Verse.