No longer floating light,
Am I carrying someone else?
Am I now another’s boat to the next life?
Out they come, the little doubts lining
Up on the shore, like troops.
Will they let us pass?
mother
Birthing
Create multiple lines. Blood lines, tear lines, love lines. Multiple directions that multiply upon the world more blood, tears and love.
As a child grows, lines unfurl in borrowed darkness until they reach their own light which grows and grows until the time of their own
darkness, when new lines multiply over theirs and then grow away, as they did, towards light, towards darkness.
Motherhood
My mother said she could see me with little
Boys, like little suns, tiny stars, their own
Planets rolling about the sky, their sky, with
Me a moon, but a moon, smaller now, but
Gripped by them, in their orbit circling them
For the rest of my life and out beyond it
Into the blankness of their lives unlived yet,
To outlive my light, to bounce off my rock
When it is dead, when it is simply a reflection
Of theirs.
Mother
You are stronger
Than the bay that is beaten
All day and all night, you
Are cleaner and brighter than
The cool fragments of matter
That cake round our toes,
Softly absorbing their heat.
You are wiser
Than the ache of oak creaking
As the bark is baked, you
Are livelier at heart than
The leaves that crackle round
The edges of the hazels,
Crisping autumn into nuts.
You are kinder
Than the caves that are hidden
Away from cats who play catch,
Safe nesting for runny eggs
Impatient to hatch wet wings,
Your ledges echo with the
Quiet drop of Peace on stone.
You are better
Than the ravens at keeping
Watch lifelong through the
Woe and the weather, the
Sheets of fog and the pain, your
Sweet call is the plain truth
That feeds hope through to your young.
Thank you.
Being Every Day 