Category:  Family Poems
Subcategory: Hard Times Poems

Votes: 62
Rating: 4.53

As a baby my mother gave me up to the Foundling Hospital in London, and from there I was boarded out to a foster mother. On attaining school age, I and my three foster brothers were sent to a school with hundreds of others in the same plight. It was tough... Nearly 10 years later my birth mother came along and took me out. The transition from an institutional life to a family life was very difficult and try as I could, my life became very unhappy and desperate...even to suicidal tendencies. Less than three years later I had to leave. The years went by with very little contact with my mother...and when we did meet it was always a very strained relationship. Now in her twilight years, nothing has improved, as much as I've tried. We are now at the stage where she no longer wants me in her life in any form and never wants to see me again. There is so much more to tell...

The Home He Knew Best

©Ken Budden

A mother and son were parted at birth,
Wrenched from each other on this terrible earth,
With no place to go she walks through the night,
Looking for somewhere till the morning light.

Lonely and sad and with no family or friend,
Shunned and broken hearted - too delicate to mend,
She searched for a room to lay down her poor head,
Suffering her punishment for being unwed.

She spotted an ad. offering "bed and full board",
For someone to clean; this could not be ignored,
She located the house and knocked on the door,
Praying that no one had been there before.

A kindly old lady answered her call,
Inviting her in to the fashionable hall,
She said she'd come about the job advertised,
And could start immediately, if so desired.

A few questions asked and she was given the job,
But emotions overcame her, she broke down and sobbed.
The kindly old lady put her hand on her arm,
Said, "there's no need for tears, here you'll come to no harm.

And so for the mother a new life begins,
Toiling each day but remembering her sins,
Her little child gone, would she see him again?
Could she go through her life with this terrible pain?

The child was placed at an early date,
Along with three others of similar fate,
To a home where life was abundant with love,
And God watched over from his throne up above.

But the day finally came they had to leave this behind,
And enter a school where no love would they find,
Beatings and bullying were 'the order of the day',
They had no one to turn to, it's here they must stay.

But the boys from this school were different to others,
Not only because of the absence of mothers,
It was survival of the fittest, you couldn't be weak,
You kept your mouth shut and not be a sneak.

Night-times the boys were risen from bed,
Given a beating, but ne'er a tear was shed,
Food for the young ones was whisked away,
Taken by big boys...who learned that in their day.

Years went by till the mother found her son,
Brought up oppressively, unknowing what she done,
But he holds nothing against her, it was the choice she made,
And now he forgives her for the penalties THEY'VE paid.

But the happiness he was seeking just never came,
Those important years had extinguished the flame,
The difficulty being the adjustments required,
And mistakes on BOTH sides to be rectified.

Unjust expectations created concern,
As much as he tried, there was too much to learn,
For a family life meant sharing and giving,
With trust and love, NOT the way we were living.

Sometimes he wondered, would life have been better,
If he'd stayed at the school and not even met her,
For though life at the school was hardly a rest,
It was after all the HOME he knew best.

Ken Budden. 2007

122 47