The Mother Archetype
Now I’m
approaching the age she was when she was first diagnosed with cancer. And I am rediscovering a person beyond the
martyr or the “Mother.” She was the one
who was the center of attention, the one who organized all the festivities in
our house. She was the one who knew a
thousand stories to tell of myths and animals, who kept me close to the earth
with walks stopping to show a plant that tasted sour or a mushroom to eat.
There was
a time when Julija danced through the five day long weddings in Latvia and had
a string of suitors. She won the math
prizes in her school and on the way home brought the cows in for milking.
All those
years of life and pleasure are what’s returning to me. I am her daughter after all and I sought happiness
in different ways but have found her again in the curves of the hills of our
farm and the gardens she so cared for.
A poem for those days. May they live on.
Vistas
New York wrap around world,
thickets engulf
the unsuspecting,
panic pierces
the young.
To be an immigrant once
again,
returning to childhood fears
in accented tongues,
rhapsody in decay.
It´s still there.
The river slows.
A cathedral stands despite
endless shows of light and
age.
I verify, in season,
my city is alive.
Perhaps the city is another,
one of ancient folk tales,
of mother and kin
traced to age and left
behind.
What is place to exist
except in a
dream?
Country cicadas and grasshopper
green
marked my youth.
Snakes scared even mother
as staunch as the universe.
The country is tractor
widths
and early morning eyes.
Say it is so, this life of
shaping
rocks and dreams.
The last visit
marred by dead,
once singing alive in its core.
The body too long gone,
I wake to it dressed and
plucked,
left in the snow.
Even Granny visits,
her cane parting the clouds.
We smile and her massive flesh
wrinkled and folded
moves on.
