The Battered Mother Still Loves
We are criminals. We are murderers.
We set futures ablaze with the embers of the past,
We stuff black smoke down the throat of our own mother, silently watch her choke on her own ashes.
All while we clutch our own children, the heirs to her suffering, babble weightless apologies and promises built on soft ground.
But the battered mother still loves.
The sunlight still wakes to kiss us each morning,
The night’s soft sighs still lure us towards dreaming each night.
The moon still calls for shimmering tides to pull laughter from our chests,
The bumblebees in our gardens still bring life to our crops, even with poison dusted on their delicate wings
Ancient arms still reach to the sky and wrap their breath around our cold shoulders.
Unfathomable, it seems, to embrace after slaughter.
To hold blood-covered hands
Merciful, our mother is
Despite our crimes.
We cut her children to their knees and set ablaze their hair
But my, is she forgiving.
Because we, criminals all the while, too are her blooms
Alongside the trees and the birds, the tallgrasses and the tides
Our planet is our greatest lover; we are her greatest hope
because we are her.
With the rains, we will wash away the past.
With the winds, we will blow out our fires.
And with the seas, we will rise.
