open lacework

18. MOTHERSONG

Men, our Lovers of the night :
O, we remember.
Husbands, Sons and Brothers :
We remember
Arms outreached to us, your hands, your deep and smoothing fingers,
Rocking trunks, your pressing bearded silence,
Your deep hollows where we laid our sleep,
our love.

We glinted, once, before you,
in the sunlight :
Spun our mystic dances
in the moonlight ,
Sung our rhythm, wove our steps between your stately figures,
Told our myths, our dreams of inspiration,
Brought your children for your teaching songs,
your love.

Remember once your daughters
and their laughter
Calling up gold harvests
with their laughter
dandelions and sunflower girls, birds and squirrels without secrets,
guardians of ground and herb and creature,
Shared their colours, spirals, sacred spells
with you.

Now Earth is broken open
for her secrets.
Daughter, mother buried
with their secrets.
Men have traded hearts for power and monuments of stone,
mined our Earth for ore and gold and iron,
Sought the secret codes of transformation
in our ground.

Sisters lost to brothers
in this darkness,
Daughters lost to fathers
in such shadow.
Know she fades and fails at last, your buried Daughter-Magic ;
pales and falls to exiled cold-bound sleep :
Chilling, with her Earthly matrix Mother
to their deaths.

Sing, our fading daughters,
spin your music.
From out our wounded Earth :
Sing up Her Sound.
This slender spiral song to men, your wounded warrior-lovers :
Unravel their blind knotted grief, unturn it ,
Re-entwine its threads as lace, your Art :
your Web.

Men can choose to Hear us
in their Silence.
Men can choose Desertion
in their Raging.

If Song is drowned by landmine-blast and drill and raid and steel :

Join voice, we mothers, sisters, daughters, nuns :
Our sweet, receding, sacred hymns of Women
In Retreat.