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 Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, and New Verse News, which recently nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize.