A MOTHER'S PASSION
_ Introduction
In the section on 'The Four Domains, I outline my groping for understanding of human perception. I feel a 'whole human', one who has walked the walk and passed through the fire, comes away with a deeper capacity for feeling and understanding.
One of the features that I hadn't specifically dealt with in that section (yet) is the phenomenon of memory- which must also surely act in all four domains (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual memory).
In the present section ('A Mother's Passion'), I offer chronological poems, most all of which show some aspect of 'memory's inner glow' as I reflect on the winding path of my experience with my son. I had lost five out of six kids, which ups the ante for this vital relationship. In these writings, he is growing, but I am also growing (and aging). What is sometimes inadequately referred to as 'nostalgia' comes to light the memory with an inner golden glow.
Not all of these are gentle poems. when you read 'Passion', it will be clear that my secret is out. I am a barbarian. These are not gentle or delicate feelings, and I am neither gentle nor delicate in the telling. Love poems are sometimes a scream of passion, especially when dealing with what someone once called ‘the unbearable passage of time’.
My son and his girl friend are now expecting their first child. This is just an extraordinary odyssey.
In the section on 'The Four Domains, I outline my groping for understanding of human perception. I feel a 'whole human', one who has walked the walk and passed through the fire, comes away with a deeper capacity for feeling and understanding.
One of the features that I hadn't specifically dealt with in that section (yet) is the phenomenon of memory- which must also surely act in all four domains (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual memory).
In the present section ('A Mother's Passion'), I offer chronological poems, most all of which show some aspect of 'memory's inner glow' as I reflect on the winding path of my experience with my son. I had lost five out of six kids, which ups the ante for this vital relationship. In these writings, he is growing, but I am also growing (and aging). What is sometimes inadequately referred to as 'nostalgia' comes to light the memory with an inner golden glow.
Not all of these are gentle poems. when you read 'Passion', it will be clear that my secret is out. I am a barbarian. These are not gentle or delicate feelings, and I am neither gentle nor delicate in the telling. Love poems are sometimes a scream of passion, especially when dealing with what someone once called ‘the unbearable passage of time’.
My son and his girl friend are now expecting their first child. This is just an extraordinary odyssey.
1 LET THEM BE FREE (1998)
_
Let their hearts be free
Let them know no such weight
And chains of guilt and pain and loss
As have held me down.
Let their hearts be free
With their footsteps
To run and grow without fear.
Let their spirits rise in strength.
Let their spirits rise in freedom.
Let them know their hands as instruments of goodness
Without blame or condemnation.
All these things that I would have
If I cannot have them
Let my children have them.
Let them be free
Let them be free
Let them be free.
Let them know no such weight
And chains of guilt and pain and loss
As have held me down.
Let their hearts be free
With their footsteps
To run and grow without fear.
Let their spirits rise in strength.
Let their spirits rise in freedom.
Let them know their hands as instruments of goodness
Without blame or condemnation.
All these things that I would have
If I cannot have them
Let my children have them.
Let them be free
Let them be free
Let them be free.
_2 MAKE IT COUNT
_
From “the Valley of Song’ (Elizabeth Goudge); 'You don’t bring down beauty to the earth through prayer without being tired and cold and frightened. You have to pay the price of what you ask for.'
She tells it like it is.You don’t get anything accomplished without paying for it- by being tired, hungry, cold, and in pain, or some other price. And that is OK.
But if you suffer, do it for a good cause. Don’t let someone else inflict it on you for their pleasure while you spin your wheels and get no where. Make it count.
‘Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute’
Pay the price, do the work, but don’t let anyone else drain you.
Set your standards, and set them high. It is your work, and should reflect your desires. You pay for it with weariness, with the pain of your body, but you want it to be beautiful.
From “the Valley of Song’ (Elizabeth Goudge); 'You don’t bring down beauty to the earth through prayer without being tired and cold and frightened. You have to pay the price of what you ask for.'
She tells it like it is.You don’t get anything accomplished without paying for it- by being tired, hungry, cold, and in pain, or some other price. And that is OK.
But if you suffer, do it for a good cause. Don’t let someone else inflict it on you for their pleasure while you spin your wheels and get no where. Make it count.
‘Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute’
Pay the price, do the work, but don’t let anyone else drain you.
Set your standards, and set them high. It is your work, and should reflect your desires. You pay for it with weariness, with the pain of your body, but you want it to be beautiful.
_2 YOU CAN’T HAVE PASSION WITHOUT PAIN
_
The incandescence
Of having power in your hand;
Carbureting the pain,
Striking the arc;
The passion is key
The passion is life.
It is driven by pain
And victory over pain.
The incandescence
Of having power in your hand;
Carbureting the pain,
Striking the arc;
The passion is key
The passion is life.
It is driven by pain
And victory over pain.
_4 The Fountains of Ithaca (1999)
_
I remember the fountains
The water playing,
The colored lights.
And you in awe
Some eight years old
Sitting and watching
For an hour or more.
The water and lights still play in my spirit
And you are there
my very young son.
Enthralled by the spectacle,
the soft sound, the mist
the pattern of lights and water in the darkness.
I can still hear the sound of the water.
Thank God for that time
Lost and yet not lost.
The memory tears at the heart, and brings tears.
I want to hold you, and that time.
I do not want to let you slip away.
It was nine years ago.
I cannot make it happen again.
But I do so want to go back
To the magic,
To the happy time.
I want your life, and my life
To have that beauty,
That shared peace and wonder.
I do not want to lose it.
I love you so.
I remember the fountains
The water playing,
The colored lights.
And you in awe
Some eight years old
Sitting and watching
For an hour or more.
The water and lights still play in my spirit
And you are there
my very young son.
Enthralled by the spectacle,
the soft sound, the mist
the pattern of lights and water in the darkness.
I can still hear the sound of the water.
Thank God for that time
Lost and yet not lost.
The memory tears at the heart, and brings tears.
I want to hold you, and that time.
I do not want to let you slip away.
It was nine years ago.
I cannot make it happen again.
But I do so want to go back
To the magic,
To the happy time.
I want your life, and my life
To have that beauty,
That shared peace and wonder.
I do not want to lose it.
I love you so.
_5 Exchange Student (1998)
_
How can I tell you goodbye
When there are no goodbyes?
How can I let you go
When you are so much a part of me?
I am drowning in tears,
Salt and ammonia.
There are no goodbyes.
You will go
But my heart will hold you.
You will be gone
But not forgotten.
You will come back.
But as these minutes trickle out, as time gets shorter,
The hours that I cannot spend with you are bitter.
Love is a strength and a weakness,
A give and a take.
My heart will never be empty,
My arms will never be full
Until I can hold you again.
Godspeed, my son.
How can I tell you goodbye
When there are no goodbyes?
How can I let you go
When you are so much a part of me?
I am drowning in tears,
Salt and ammonia.
There are no goodbyes.
You will go
But my heart will hold you.
You will be gone
But not forgotten.
You will come back.
But as these minutes trickle out, as time gets shorter,
The hours that I cannot spend with you are bitter.
Love is a strength and a weakness,
A give and a take.
My heart will never be empty,
My arms will never be full
Until I can hold you again.
Godspeed, my son.
6 Flight
The pathway of the moon lies across the ocean.
My spirit tugs at my restraining body
Like a windblown balloon tugs at a child's hand,
Impatient to be off.
To flit along that moonlit pathway
Oblivious of pain or cold or fear.
To play and run along the ocean's path
To find you.
A little ghost come to blow around you
And tug at your hair
Near one of the 100 towers
In your faraway city.
The ripples are soft and leisurely;
My spirit is steeped in the light
And I am at peace.
(Early 1999, my son was in Prague)
My spirit tugs at my restraining body
Like a windblown balloon tugs at a child's hand,
Impatient to be off.
To flit along that moonlit pathway
Oblivious of pain or cold or fear.
To play and run along the ocean's path
To find you.
A little ghost come to blow around you
And tug at your hair
Near one of the 100 towers
In your faraway city.
The ripples are soft and leisurely;
My spirit is steeped in the light
And I am at peace.
(Early 1999, my son was in Prague)
_7 A Mother's Prayer (2006)
_
It came to me, as I listened to them reading nursery rhymes, that I had somehow lost you. First I had lost you to the passage of time.
No one can hold back time. No one can keep the innocent child. They grow and change- and so it should be. But the heart aches, and the arms are outstretched, for the child that was, for the golden times that have been..
But now I risk losing you again. You are grown, and you make your own choices. You stand by them, or you fall by them. You are saved, or you are lost.
I want to find and hold the child you were, to keep you safe from harm. That is not in my power. But I pray for who you were, and who you are.
Who can hold the wind? Who can stop time? Who can keep the sweetness of the past? No longing can make it stay.
I want you to have all the goodness that was, and all the goodness that can be. I want your heart to be whole, and your life straight and honest. I want you to be strong and gentle. I want things to be good for you. I want you to be able to love, to know the full range of feelings. I want you to have the use of your strengths- all of them- before you lose them.
God be with you, and be a light to your feet, so you may find your way.
You have to build on a good foundation, straight and strong.
It came to me, as I listened to them reading nursery rhymes, that I had somehow lost you. First I had lost you to the passage of time.
No one can hold back time. No one can keep the innocent child. They grow and change- and so it should be. But the heart aches, and the arms are outstretched, for the child that was, for the golden times that have been..
But now I risk losing you again. You are grown, and you make your own choices. You stand by them, or you fall by them. You are saved, or you are lost.
I want to find and hold the child you were, to keep you safe from harm. That is not in my power. But I pray for who you were, and who you are.
Who can hold the wind? Who can stop time? Who can keep the sweetness of the past? No longing can make it stay.
I want you to have all the goodness that was, and all the goodness that can be. I want your heart to be whole, and your life straight and honest. I want you to be strong and gentle. I want things to be good for you. I want you to be able to love, to know the full range of feelings. I want you to have the use of your strengths- all of them- before you lose them.
God be with you, and be a light to your feet, so you may find your way.
You have to build on a good foundation, straight and strong.
8 PASSION (2011)
My savage spirit longs for you
With a reaching out
Somewhere between a thirst and a scream.
My mind turns over encounters
Each small in their way but golden
And with an unbearable longing for what we have lived.
Memory cuts and burns, knifes the heart
Ripping and twisting with the increasing distance between us,
with the undeniable passage of time.
How can love be this way?
It should be soft;
It should be a rising sun, a pink flower.
But here my being reaches,
tries to hold what passes on.
It was, what it was, and now,
It is, what it is.
Every year with you, every moment with you,
Each golden time,
Happy, sad, heart-torn.
All of it a tapestry;
I run over it, the weaver,
tears staining my work.
The world is the warp.
Our lives are the weft.
You are the light of my life.
I love you, my son.
3/1/12; I just discovered Gene Logsden's site;
http://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/secret-crying-places/
I believe he understands the sweep of emotions at the root of this section. His web site is well worth the read.
http://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/secret-crying-places/
I believe he understands the sweep of emotions at the root of this section. His web site is well worth the read.