A Mother's Promise

All these pictures, this is the image which holds them. 
The mother-woman, always seeking, always looking, 
always learning to See. 

The four walls of that frame, they take this big world with all its color and noise and movement, and they dim all 
but the pearlescent sphere of this moment, 

and all of me moves into that lit brilliance. 

The way a shadow plays, a wall arches ,sunlight filters,

a little hand touches...
the power crashes through this hole made in time,
washes over me and then it lights me too. 

And in that framed stillness, I Under-stand.

I stand under the raging love that is you and the spilling sun that freely gives 
and the Beauty that re-news itself over and over and over again, offering itself to me in the infinite folds of time, folds I wrap around a lukewarm heart until I feel the pulsing heat of that love gone wild again. 

What is this gift of the Observer? The Witness? The Parent? Is this what St Francis meant when he so fervently asked to want to love more than be loved, to understand more than be understood?  

The mother, she is the Witness. She Watches and Sees and Records. She is the keeper of your stories. The captive audience

because she never tires of watching you unfold.  
She will hold this sphere of light as you dance within it,
her will eye Be-Hold your beauty and when you forget it, 
when you are dirty and soot covered from the ashes and fires of your journey,

she will still Be-Holding these images for you.  

In her heart she holds strings of you
and when the ones you hold become tangled, 
she will hand hers back to you, 
and you will begin the Great Work 

of untangling you, 
Re-Deeming the threads of your story.  

She will weave for you the images of the little one in the trees and the flowers, 
of the sun dancing in your eyes, 
of you greeting this great big world with open arms

She will never let you believe you are anything less than sacred 

and she will never never stop learning to Be-hold you as the great Mystery your heart inhabits

and when you forget these things she will show you the images, the shining pearls of You,

and she will offer you the fragments of your innocence 

until you Re-member yourself 

and the sun dances in your eyes again.  

The word promise, it comes from the Latin to send forward.  
And so this is what a Mother's Promise is,
this is what she sends on dove's wings to the furthest reaches of this pearl-world moment, 

this is what her heart sings forth. 

This is what she sends forward for you to catch one day, 

this shining Moment of You.

Revealed

The light dances through the tops of the trees

the smell of pine and clean fill my lungs

I watch as Sterling leaps from rock to rock

I wonder as each foot finds its mark so sure and so certain. 

In the house he often seems awkward and unaware, a bit of the bull in the China shop.

But now I see he is none of those things, now he is within something big enough to hold him
and so now I can see the whole of his truth, the whole of his strength and ability.

I watch him push with all his strength against a stone, it doesn't move...
and then he finds a tool, a large stick and digs with hands gripping tight, face set in determination.

He has finally met his match here, 
in earth that can support the kind of freedom that flies in a thousand hoofbeats,

 in rocks that have seen the volcanic revolution of entire landscapes

 in rivers that have shifted and moved and flowed

and in trees that stand tall, unmoving, unafraid.

Here his body speaks the language of his earth mother, 

here is all he could need to Become.

Here there is only Yes. 
Here I open my heart fully to the wild beauty that is him.

And here, I breathe it in...

And I see now, see how the parts of us that seem clumsy and less-than whisper our strengths..

come this way, they say, 

out of the box you've built around yourself,

the box you thought was the only reality

see how it was the box that was awkward 

and how you shine in the light...

Golden

It's the golden time
Sunflowers wave lazily 

Chamisa's golden blanket 

Covers the rusty sand
The sun is strong
It is hard to see
The gold shines so hot

Your coming begins in the deep hours of the morning
The Dark Still
I am in the twilight of sleep
But I know you are coming

The sensations thread through my dreams
Filling those hours with a quiet wondering
"Is it today? Will you come today?"

In the water I stay
Allowing my body to work
While the warmness bathes me
And the smell of lavender
Washes me in its dream

I leave the water, my body begins to rebel against the sensations
They are strong and undeniable
Like the heat outside beating down
I send my breath into them 

Unrelenting, if I'd only known how close you were
It takes all of me
Each 60 seconds
Takes the whole of all my years lived and dreamed
Collapsed to this single moment
Where I meet you
And I give you
All of me

And then that's it, the sensation of you moving through me
My body moves on it's own
Each contraction now transmuted to
Respond to your moving
A symphony of its own
Each note ringing out
Writing you into existence 

And then the burning as you find your way through
The heat, there are no sensations anymore
Do I see or hear? It is all one. There is just now. It's all that exists and I can't even sense it because I am it. You and I, we are all of it.

Then the release, you are no longer me. You are you. I can see you and feel you and hear you. It is a miracle. You have become and you have left me all at once.
The cord still pulses with the remembering of us. It slowly fades as you let go and find your way.

To see you, to look into you, the connection stabs into me with its depth. It's like I am falling into you.

all the nights of oneness, you with me without me really knowing you
the deep spilling red of the placenta laying separate from us, my gift to you for all that time,
the way my empty belly contracts into itself...it remembers you...

all this I did not feel or know until I saw you
And so you have shown me
Sometimes to meet someone you have to let them go...

Golden sunshine spills over us

And the sunflowers fill a vase
And I can see now
How everything shines gold.