At night,
when mother lay with father,
when the Earth moved away,
I could hear the crinkle of sacred leaves
as she prayed.
Her whispered words flashed
to an infinite point.
Her supplication was long into the night,
and the fading hush blended
with the thick honey drip of His presence --
texturing my mother’s sighs.
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.
her soul fluttered, but she was resolute,
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.
And so, when the 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.
