You are a balancing act
of both splendor and sacrifice.
With grace, you usher in life-
giving and giving,
running dry but giving still.
Do you consider the act of pillaging and taking what is rightly yours?
Sometimes. I am sure.
And yet, within the arc of your back you carry the world
effortlessly and with the understanding
of a world that divided itself
before it could allow your healing to take root.
Counting your dreams, you offer them up and
sing sweet melodies
that have raised up the very vultures
that appear at midday and midnight –
a perfectly timed destruction.
But mother,
I must still not understand and
somehow hope that we never will –
so we dream of whole selves that can fall
on occasion and
hand the bags to another
even for a short while.
Oh, Dear Mother.