In her older daughter’s eyes,
whose body was developing 
faster than her mind,
but whose innocence
could shield her soul,
the mother saw her future.
In her younger daughter’s eyes,
already so full of awareness,
intelligence,
& promise,
the mother saw the future.
In her husband’s eyes—
haloes of hazel
encircling a hazy green—
she saw their future,
& in her brown, bloodshot eyes,
she saw not one day past today.

Bound with a swaddle
& gagged with a paccie,
Babbling Brooke grew up to be the new Houdini,
wiggling her way out of an uncivil reunion
& giggling all the way to the local credit union.
This former quicker spitter-upper,
bubble factory,
& drool machine,
kept the upper hand
by sleep-depriving
(& poo-pooing on)
the hands that fed her.
However, when Cupid,
feeling underhanded after a row with Eros,
shot B.B.
(now Blabbermouth Brooke)
in the lub-dubber,
this former rude awakener—
who hit the milk bottle more than once too often—
realized,
after giving birth to Saltwater Taffy,
that she was paying for her raising
with every one of Taffy’s cries.

He loved teaching college students
about all those high-minded things;
she loved teaching her little children
about all those basic things 
that would help them someday understand
those high-minded things.
However, her preference for early childhood education
was rooted in the fact that children knew B.S. when they saw it
a lot more than when they heard it,
for she had days—
when the Duchess lost her cakehole clogger & jolted her awake
during the wee wee hours—
when she was just spitballing her way through
the periodic table of contents.