Mothers

Through veils of bright red pain They bring us to this life; Through tears and laughter They love their small pink wonders Through all those gates they must pass On their way to full humanity. They are lilac-love and discipline Navigators of our stormy seas Heedless of themselves for our sakes And they bring us all the soft sweetnesses of home and hearth That ever call for our return. And so from every tongue There falls the sacred one-word prayer When the wide cold world affrights us When the hand shakes, palsylike And the heart beats hard against its cage: In deep of night When something unseen stirs The whispered hope is "Mother". When the flat grey weight of grief Lies hard across our shoulders The word that lifts the stone is "Mother". For scorch of stove, for frostbite sting We conjure cool and warm with "Mother". In the place for giving birth: "Mother". On the battlefield: "Mother". Whatever pulls us to our knees To rudely remind us how small we be In the Grand Scheme of Things, The idea of her pulls us up again For we are hers entire In a way unique to her - And things will be alright Because she says it shall be so, And one may never never Never Disappoint that Sacred One: "Mother".