To be a poem is not the same as to write a poem. Being a poem takes lightness of mind and soul, weightless wisdom, boldness of heart. In other words, the branches are less weighty, but more supple, lithe, and limber than the vine. Together they create great spiritual choreography. Such is the embracing way of our mothering God.
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She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
They were the same horses.
Joy Harjo
A NAME
When Eve walked among
the animals and named them—
nightingale, red-shouldered hawk
fiddler crab, fallow deer—
I wonder if she ever named
them to speak back, looked into
their wide wonderful eyes and
whispered, Name me, name me.
Ada Limón
INSTRUCTIONS ON NOT GIVING UP
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limb shoving
their cotton-candy colored blossoms to the slate
sky of spring rains, it’s greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
Ada Limón
BREATH IN ME
Breathe in me, breath of God
healing my lungs’ disease
So that I may in purest love
breathe in, and breath out with thee.
Breathe in me, breath of God,
For when my life is done
And my sweet lungs lose all their pow’r
My last breath and yours are one.
Lyn G. Brakeman (after Hymn #508)
And then the plant, fresh charged, would be
itself a vein of grace,
a way the keeper might extend
a hopeful, green embrace,
connecting child and foe and friend,
co-mingled and entwined,
to be and bear the fruit of god
in one life-giving vine.
Michael Hudson
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And such are the many and varied ways of affectionate naming, guiding, breathing, mothering we recognize and celebrate on this 2023 MOTHERS’ DAY.
