POEM_MY_MOTHERS

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My Mother's Eyes

As I look deep into my mother's eyes,

I am swept beyond the gentleness of blue―

I see a child there,

dreaming herself the daughter of a king,

an afternoon princess balancing acorn teacups

on a splendid cloth of emerald grass.

A child who sings, and laughs,

and cries when she skins her knee, just like I did.

A barefoot girl learning how to dance

with the innocent colors of spring.

And there, also, in those very same eyes,

is a young woman with sunlight in her hair

and a spirit woven of saffron flames;

holding Monday's child so carefully in her arms,

as she bends, like a moonflower, in the wind.

A barefoot woman learning how to dance, once more,

with the graceful colors of summer.

And there again, I see her,

like a tender leaf turned golden;

the woman who offered me the gift of my life… and her own.

The woman who taught me how to dance and loved me

the best way she knew how—

and as I gaze into the gentleness of my own eyes,

I can no longer tell who is the mother and who is the child

nor in whose eyes we seem to be the same,

for both of saffron flames are woven,

and both have grown more beautiful with time…

Each of us made stronger by the other,

laughing now, with sunlight in our hair;

dancing barefoot with the brilliant colors of autumn—

she and I, forever sisters of the light.

—Heather K. O’Hara

from AXIS, The Song in the Center of the Soul

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