At night,
when mother lay with father,
when earth moved away,
she would pray.
Her whispered word flashed
to an infinite point.
Her supplication was long in the night,
and the abating hush blended
in the thick honey drip of His presence --
the viscid flow textured by my mother’s sighs
and the crinkle of sacred leaves.
The woven hands of two lovers’ caught every drip
drop
drip.
A while,
a while --
she began again.
Always twice. A vow to the Spirit.
(When she was eight, in Brundage, Texas,
by the Rio Nueces, the moon in her pocket,
in the basin of the Big Dipper,
she faced Barbas de Oro.
She was resolute in her sprouting soul,
and she waited. And it came.
A stream beyond the Milky way --
a gentle
flow
gentle.
She drank deeply, tasted the space of her being,
and understood her journey’s end.)
And so, she spoke in many tongues,
and flames danced above her head,
and lit our house for the world to see.
My father always there
warmed
his hands
warmed.
She was a grand warrior in the Kingdom of the Ghost.
When she surrendered her body to the flame,
the incense of her love remained in the fumes
of her family’s lives.
There was no resounding gong,
no clanging cymbal,
no moving mountain
only the remains of faith, hope, and love --
but the greatest of these
was her love.
So, when earth moves away,
when the feathery bliss of tomorrow
fluffs my dreams,
I catch my breath
trying to discern the angel tongue.
My supplication is long in the night --
a while,
a while,
I begin again.
