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.

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.

Happy Mother’s Day, dear daughter!
All my love to you!
Praised be those who give themselves,
Poised to part the sea!
Years of loving need no quarter,
Making passion do,
Offering a trove of selves,
Though vicariously.
How beautiful the gift of giving
Each the unspent whole,
Returning, turning, like a tide,
‘Ere the moment wanes!
So beautiful, the act of living
Densely through a soul
Alight with wonder at the ride,
Yet soon to take the reins!

Happiness, like most things, comes from mothers.
An amniotic universe is rare.
Paradises aren’t found with others,
Perhaps because we must breathe our own air.
Yet even after paradise, we find
Mothers are a bath of warm affection.
Only mothers’ love is truly blind
To guarantee all errant souls protection.
However we find love, it can be only
Evanescences of memories
Retained from when we never could be lonely,
‘Ere we left our mother’s outsized knees.
So good it is to have that happiness
Designed to grace each subsequent caress,
All future love and joy to underlie,
Yearning backwards towards a mother’s sigh.

Happiness is like a sunny day:
All one’s bitterness is drowned in light.
Praise be the light, though it must pass away,
Perhaps because compassion needs the night.
Yet when one feels like swallowing barbed wire,
More or less does nothing for the pain.
Old memories return as if on fire,
Tormenting one with unforgiving shame.
How can I, who love you, come inside,
Each wound to bind up with an ointment rare,
Restoring the once effervescent bride
‘Neath misery no happiness can spare?
So shall I sing to you of all life’s beauty,
Doing through the night my daytime duty.
A song of love may not bring back your noon,
Yet in your darkness, let me be your moon.

Happiness can also be a haunting,
A text one can recite but cannot read.
Peace need not erase the need for need,
Pressed to a perfection one finds daunting.
Yet often one can win with little warning,
Mothering the plant without the seed,
Of help in breeding though of different breed,
Taking pleasure in another’s dawning.
How one feels depends on how one chooses,
Embracing always less that what one wills,
Redeeming even tragedy with passion
‘Mid the sinking tapestries of night.
So may you find the courage that refuses
Dominion to the clarity that kills,
Awakening the mother that might fashion
Yearning strong enough to see the light.