Sunday 3 May 2020


MOTHER

by Katherine West


To reach the mother
You must cross
The river
Not
When it is jade
And glass
Jade in the deeper
Middle
With its smooth baritone dips
Glass along the pebble
Edges
With their lacy soprano ripples
No
You must cross
After the first snow
The heavy wet one
That snaps junipers—
Snipers
In the silent dawn
That fills the valleys
With mud
And slash
That fills the river
That turns it brown
And deafening
As a fighter plane
Or a large animal
In pain
Only then
Can you put your bare
Foot
Into the roar
Can you wade
Naked
Into the maw
Of the brown bear
Ice
Up to your thighs
Your withered flower
Your belly
A small pouch
Where you carry
All your unborn children
Your young girl’s
Unsucked breasts
Your unwrung neck
Your ghost hair
Your Neolithic brain waves
Sending out endless
Calls
For the mother

You will not make it
Across
The brown bear
Will eat you
Will swallow you down
You will not sleep
You will not be
You will not hear
The music
Shift
As the bear
Lumbers away
The cellos
Fade
Replaced
By the kingfisher’s
Laugh
The flutes
You will also
Not hear
That will not wake you
You
Who are not asleep
Cannot be roused
You
Who are now
Perhaps
A white rock
Stretched out
Along the deepest trough
Of the current
Or a young moon
Curled around its dark mother
On a hazy evening
You only glow
Beneath the surface
I cannot see your face
But our eyes
Meet
As the great blue
Heron
Glides in low overhead
And around the bend


* * * * *

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near the Gila Wilderness, where she writes poetry about the soul-importance of wilderness and performs it with her musician husband, Yaakov. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone TrainScimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as LalitambaBombay Gin, and New Verse News, which recently nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize.


1 comment:

  1. Whoa! A Soshtakovichian symphony of visuals and tempos and sounds, harmonies, discord and courage and horror and divine comedy. Brava! Brava!

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