As my annual summer holiday draws to an end I look back on weeks of family time as warm and intense as the Danish summer sun. This weeks poem dwells on those feelings.

Family

.

Habitual headaches,
recurring responsibilities,
chronic arguments,
sibling rivalries
and childish roles you can’t avoid.

All those complications.
How much easier
to be unbound,
to live without attachment,

yet, as we cheerfully
hug farewell, in tears and laughter,
as sister, mother, daughter,
I know a life without ties
is as sad as a life without freedom.

Nyborg, Denmark 2014