Answering the Why Baby

author's note:

After "going long" for the last month, I thought I should offer a shorter poem.

Just a few lines--and yet it took years to write them.


ANSWERING THE WHY BABY

“Why--!--?

  Oh why!”

is what a baby cries
in the pain of birth.

But, to my credit
I grew out of it--

I grew out of it
when I realized why:

we need to grow, that's why!

but why, oh why
do we need to grow?--
to so painfully grow?

"We just must--that's how come!"

is the fact
I grew to accept

and thereafter, began asking
better questions--

that is: questions
I might someday answer--

if, through asking, I grow
enough to know.

© 2012, Michael R. Patton
searching for the new mythology