Black branches rising
Naked arms against white Sky
Inner sap forms dreams
Ash goddess sheds leaves
Yellow blanket sheathes ground
Strong roots grow under
Black Crow hops on grass
Cedar sways in winter borne wind
Earth Mother dreams Child
Mother is there at the beginning
Mother is who you came out of
Mother is food
Mother is sleep
Mother is love
Mother is the first teacher
Mother is nature
Mother is nurture
Mother Nature is Mother
Mother is who I need to separate from to become me
Mother has a wound
Mother is who’s wound I must heal
Mother is who I trust
Mother is who I roll my eyes to
Mother is almost always woman
Mother is taken for granted
Mother is who rejects me and I reject
Mother is who I feel smothered by
Mother is who I am
Mother and daughter
Daughter to my mother
Mother to my daughter
May I feel all the wounds
May I speak them
May I heal all the wounds
May I heal my mother wound
May we give back to all mothers
All women
May we give back to Mother Nature
May I give back to my mother
May I give a new future to my daughter
Mother is the beginning
The rhythm of breath
The strum of the heart
Of all that is me and isn’t me
Of unity and division
Mother is the beginning of love
I look into your fifteen-month eyes,
blue opals of swimming water.
In them my soul bathes herself.
Each day you bring countless
smiles to my lips.
Each day you push me to feel my edge.
Overlooking a cliff,
I have choices:
I can soar.
I can plummet.
In the first I find the sky. I face
life, enveloped in lightness. The blue air
tingles on my skin. I am present to each moment.
In the second I trudge in coarse gravel.
A weight pulls me down.
My patience is tried.
I feel sorry for myself.
I react impetuously.
Each day I witness the mystery
of your little body growing.
I see your uplifted hands,
the pink softness of your feet.
I secretly want to take small bites from you.
Maybe because you suck life, in milk
out of my body. Just nibbles.
I hear you forming new words. Each sound
a puzzle piece for the communication
forming between us.
Language, is another marvel.
I tend to you with tireless
limbs. I stay present
with all my strength.
Expanding waves ripple
from my heart.
A love so large it is
nameless.
The river flows,
it has no name.
I sit on its banks,
watching the water.
I am immersed
in time
relentless.
The beauty of it
astounding.
A mind-bending
simplicity.
The water churns,
the water ripples,
the water flows.
I sit. I watch.
I take in the river.
In time
I am the river.
Bicycle wheels turning,
bringing me with them.
I sense the clan of women that was,
and is no more.
Except in the warmth of my lover’s eyes,
or the closeness of a friend or two.
The spinning of my mind
while my body aches.
Wrists bare.
Swollen. Red.
Thunder in my flesh.
Gravel under my feet.
The waves crashing on the shore.
A sound that soothes my tired ears.
Loneliness that rhymes with isolation.
Our story inscribed in
my bones, holding,
arching: a cradle,
for the one I love,
who wasn’t, and now is
intrinsic part of me.
I yearn to get away.
And when I do,
I look at pictures of her,
on my phone.
Her blue eyes
two upside down opals.
The sea reflected in the onset of her emotions.
Murmuration. The dance
of a flock of birds, flying
in unison a cross the sky.
Fluttering harmony.
Perfection so imperfect.
oona's looking glass 