Glorious You

Even when the sun
Flaunted itself
Or raised the rainbow attention
Of countless ice cream cones;
Even when the sun
Played the part of the airplane pilot
Steering the course of summer,
No visible shadow
Falling on your face or dress,
And you were lighthearted effusiveness,
Still, a shadow, a veil was there.
For all a mother’s love and tenderness,
Something of you felt far –
like thousands of light years,
Or space between star and star.

Even while the sun
Flaunted itself
In forest and in field
Or played the part of the airplane pilot
Steering the course of summer,
The praying mantis would catch
And eat the fly;
The crocodile would leap
Out of the water,
And the tiger run fierce,
Flow and flame of slaughter.
This world of predator and prey
Like you, mother, felt strange and far –
Like thousands of light years
Or space between star and star.

Even while the sun
Flaunted itself
In the field of human competition,
In rivalries, throughout the world
Of work, sweat and toil and will,
Man against man, team against team,
The loser born in light of the winner,
The winner born in light of the loser,
Winner and loser defining each other –
This world of competition,
Of frustration and elation,
This world felt strange and far like you, o mother.

Your empty chair – womb of sunlight and shadow.
Your empty chair now is a beautiful word
Beside a curtain, summer-stirred.
As I part the curtain, the word flowers, unfurls,
Reveals as the flowers on your lawn speak of you.
What long had been in shadow, for years and years,
Is glorious you: dancer entranced whose dress
Are animal-images, forever flowing, wave upon wave,
A mother rearing and raising her son,
All the horrors of death seen under the sun
But one slant of the story among another, another.
Within the horrors of predator and prey,
Form consuming form, rivalries of the day,
Within even wars, is your love, o mother.

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