Sunday, February 28, 2010

To my Mother - Margaret


Dear Mom,
Today marks the one year anniversary of the day you died. I hope to die as peacefully as you did. You were a blessed woman, even though you had many disappointments in life. You never had a seriously sick child or lost a child. You were never homeless. I know you felt lonely and rejected by the men in your life - which is the fate of so many women. But you were strong in so many ways. And you did the best you could with what you had. I miss you. I hope that if you are conscious that it is in the paradise you hoped for. I love you, mom.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Hummingbirds

It matters how the stirring waters
fall into our thoughts,
the weight of liquid, heavy like a dark, spring cloud,
muddies the heart's wanderings,
turning sunny yellow pondering
into ruddy, mud-slick floors,
changing a land-locked sense of certainty
into an island, damp with questions.

It's best when the rain falls softly
to break the shell of silence
that seals us into quietude
rather than being deluged,
flooded by the worried self,
that watcher, called Ego who
imposes layer after layer
of false god images over us.

Wanting to escape being alone
is not the same as the desire to 'not be'.
Yet a universal veil
covers each of us with an illusion,
a blind-spot given to all our earthly eyes
that causes us to believe
that spirit touching spirit
is a mirage, something unattainable -
always just out of reach.


Surly God knew first that 'to feel alone',
was, in itself, the main cause for grief.
So today I will cover your head
with halos of love,
longing to convey somehow
that I see your true beauty.

Yet if I speak my love
and my longing to share
a common joy in linear time,
I fear you may soon recede
like the evening tide.

There is an unwritten law
that we all follow:
the desire for embracing
fenced off by a compulsion for autonomy.

Like hummingbirds, we tread air –
are constantly moving,
always beyond any resting place,
drinking deeply,
while looking back at what was,
tasting what is
and dreaming of what shall be
when we fly away.

© Anne Bryant-Hamon
“Somewhere Between Heaven and Earth"