On Mother’s Day
by
Bob Sommer
by
Bob Sommer
For Heather
May 8, 2011
May 8, 2011
Motherhood is optimism in the extreme,
hope that won’t be extinguished,
stubborn faith,
unlimited compassion.
And love,
always love.
Motherhood is memory fulfilled,
like the migrations of birds and whales,
who find their way
over continents and through oceans,
Not knowing why―
or asking
―but only that this is their path, their way.
And that arrival completes the memory
in flutterings and chirpings,
in submarine pleasures of return,
in ancient knowledge that needs neither
history nor language.
Memory lives in motherhood,
unfading, unstained,
like the clarity of cloudless full-moon nights,
resonant with quiet life,
with meaning in the immanent stillness.
Motherhood is always with you―
and with it: constant and reliable memory,
unbound to the physics of time,
its truth in stories,
in images no photo ever captures,
in a shiver, a motion, a sound,
in a garden plaque or the visit of a hummingbird.
Memories are life,
we still live them and live into them.
They complete us,
and motherhood completes you.
(c) Copyright Bob Sommer 2011. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright Bob Sommer 2011. All rights reserved.
