For me, two mothers aren’t one too many:
One’s for real, and one’s for other things.
Remember: there are those who haven’t any,
Missing their one chance at angel’s wings.
You’re the one most free to mother me,
Giving without worrying I’ll be spoiled.
Often my real mother “has to see,”
Dreading I might get my future soiled.
More than just an aunt, what’s in your heart
Opens doors within where I can go
To learn the difficult and gentle art
Happiness embraces those who know.
Each moment that you love me makes me whole:
Rare is she who can so grace a role.

For all that you have given me,
I can return but love. For you
Bound up the wounds I did not see
And gave me hopes and passions new.
I can return but love for you,
Whose unmoved faith my heart did move,
And gave me hopes and passions new,
And loved me till I turned to love.

Whose unmoved faith did my heart move?
The mother of my heart, not blood,
Who loved me till I turned to love.
And I became the soul I would.

The mother of my heart, not blood,
Bound up the wounds I did not see.
And I became the soul I would
For all that you have given me.

Every time I see my pansies
Vivid in the golden sun,
You are with me in my garden,
And I am once again a child.
Vivid in the golden sun,
Their beauty brings me close to tears,
And I am once again a child
Learning to assume your grace.

Their beauty brings me close to tears
As I join hands with you in love,
Learning to assume your grace,
Dancing to your inner music.

As I join hands with you in love,
You are with me in my garden,
Dancing to your inner music
Every time I see my pansies.

Even though just recently we’ve met,
I feel you are to me a second mother.
Sometimes between one person and another
There is a strangely comfortable first fit.
With you I feel just like a lonely moon
Come to the attraction of an earth,
Swinging gratefully across its girth
As if possessed at last by love its own.

With the adult need for time and space
There is the child’s need for something more:
A love that needs no answer at the core
Of all that gives one dignity and grace.

Dear Mother, please don’t take away my baby.
I’m young, alone, my husband is in jail.
But there’s a wonder in what fortune may be
Given us, though time its wisdom veil.
Please help me be a mother much as you are
By being but a mother once removed,
As I become the daughter that I thus far
Have never been, by love and labor proved.
And let me love as you did my own child,
Making the best of what I wrought in pain;
For once fate leaves, one ought to think it smiled,
Rejoicing in what one would rue in vain.
I would not give my child to another;
I need you now, but only as my mother.

Daughters-in-law are our grandchildren’s mothers.
As such, they carry our fortunes downstream.
Under their guidance, our hopes become others’,
Giving their force to a much larger dream.
How lucky we are to have you for the carer
That nurtures the hearts of our hearts, that they may
Each be a lover, a giver and sharer,
Remaking the world in their image each day.
So do we all, like streams from the mountains,
In time become joined in the souls we have made,
Now mingled forever, eternal companions,
Linked by our love in a bond that won’t fade.
As you in your noontime your work of love do,
We watch from the hillside, grateful for you

Close your eyes and wish for the one thing
You cannot do without, and when you do,
Near your heart you’ll find it, always there,
Treasure that is dear but not so rare,
Held in the mesh that all your dreams flow through.
In truth, no gift more happiness can bring,
And so this day I give my love to you.

Behold the mother with her newborn child!
An icon of a hope that never dies.
Death may label all we cherish lies,
Yet this love lies too deep to be defiled.
We clear an inner field where fate has smiled,
Letting play the pleasures of surmise,
Holding back all contrary replies,
As though our thoughts might turn the winters mild.
Despite the well-known travesties of time,
Each time a child is born we dream anew,
For only thus our losses are regained.
Though we must share the destiny of slime,
No passion in our palette is more true
Than that which cradles innocence unstained.

Before I was myself you made me, me
With love and patience, discipline and tears,
Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,
Allowing me to sail upon my sea,
Though well within the headlands of your fears.
Before I was myself you made me, me

With dreams enough of what I was to be
And hopes that would be sculpted by the years,
Then bit by bit stepped back to set me free,

Relinquishing your powers gradually
To let me shape myself among my peers.
Before I was myself you made me, me,

And being good and wise, you gracefully
As dancers when the last sweet cadence nears
Bit by bit stepped back to set me free.

For love inspires learning naturally:
The mind assents to what the heart reveres.
And so it was through love you made me, me
By slowly stepping back to set me free.

Godmothers aren’t fairies in a tale,
Offering a world that cannot be.
Demand of them glass slippers and they fail,
More likely to do favors naturally.
On them you can depend for a relation:
They offer gifts and guidance with a kiss.
Having taken on the obligation,
Each freely out of love gives what she is.
Real godmothers have no wands or wings,
So they must work with wisdom, love, and things.

From the distance of our separation
I see the whole of which I was a part;
I see the way my temper tore your heart,
And then the love beneath the laceration.
I see the landscape shaping our relation:
Your fear that I might choose with little art,
My anger at the dreams you would impart,
The ancient paths that lead to confrontation.
But knowledge needn’t linger in regret,
Nor wait upon some wind to clear its sky.
We are none the worse for what is gone.
The moments that I never will forget
Are those whose careless grace must make me cry,
Safe within a heart forever won.

Happy Mother’s Day to a dear aunt,
A refuge from conditions and demands,
Perhaps because you have a different slant,
Perhaps because your love is free of plans.
Yet for whatever reason, you are there
More simply and directly than the other,
One with whom a child can always share
The kinds of joys too carefree for a mother.
Happiness can use a bit of room,
Even in the midst of an embrace.
Relevance requires not the womb:
‘Tis love and labor that replenish grace.
So do you play this secondary part,
Dealt not by birth but by the willing heart,
Aunt extraordinaire, whose love will bring
Years of memories that dance and sing.

Happy Mother’s Day to a dear aunt,
As loving as a mother ought to be,
Pleased to act when parents won’t or can’t,
Pleased to act when moms go out to sea.
Yet yearning cannot make an aunt a mother,
Melding aptitude with milk and blood.
One finds joy in giving joy to others;
The other has her joy, if she but would.
Heaven knows the way across the darkness,
Enduring through all manner of regret,
Returning, turning to the fount of stillness
‘Mid mountains of accumulated debt.
So may you this day be satisfied
Despite the grace that fortune has denied,
Alive with love, both given and returned,
Yet blessed with nothing less than you have earned.

“Happy Mother’s Day” means more
Than have a happy day.
Within those words lie lots of things
We never get to say.
It means I love you first of all,
Then thanks for all you do.
It means you mean a lot to me,
And that I honor you.

But most of all, I guess it means
That I am thinking of
Your happiness on this, your day,
With pleasure and with love.

Happy Mother’s Day from far away!
As love has wings, it flies across the sea,
Passing seraphim alight with glee,
Placed in nooks on clouds along its way.
Years cannot such innocence betray,
Morning’s holy light perpetually
On fire within the heart, a pillar we
Then follow through the desert night and day.
Here, then, is my love, and as it lands,
Exchange it for a pigeon of your own,
Returning through the heavens what I once,
‘Ere you were born, delivered to your door.
So are we eternal, though the sands
Demand of us that piece that is on loan,
As love renews, renews the ancient dance,
Yet dancing though the wide world be no more.