My mother was a mother as a child.

My mother was a mother as a child.
Always she has cared for someone else:
No chance to roam untouched among the wild,
Unsuspected precincts of the self.
Youth was shorter than a winter day,
Prelude to a long and bitter night.
For all the souls that fortune sent her way,
She was the source of certitude and light.
Giving only, often, as of need,
Reflexively resigned to sacrifice,
Inured to pain, and yet quite prone to bleed,
Not looking at her loss, she paid the price.
Yet love has given her this recompense:
That she might savor still her innocence.