Happy Mother’s Day

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, but I don’t usually post on Sundays. Today is Saturday, and I do not always post on Saturdays, but since I was out of town much of this week, I thought today was as good a day as any to post a little something. This specific little something is a poem, nameless, that appears in the prologue of John Piper’s book Future Grace, written in honor of his wife, Noel, for Mother’s Day in 1995:

I used to dream about becoming old,
And leaning on your heart so long I’d fold
It into mine, like that old hickory tree
Along the cottage path, that after three,
Or four, or maybe five decades, has pressed
Itself against the fencing wire with rest
Unceasing, till, without a drop of blood,
The pith is pierced, and every barb a bud.

Now, barely shy of half a century,
And long since pierced with fierce fidelity,
I dream about becoming older still,
And how, some day, beside the Brightwood mill,
Between the watercourse and stream, four sons
And faithful wives, and all their little ones,
Will rise and bless the velvet steel where I,
And they, have leaned, and will until we die.