Reverence

By Marian Haddad|2015-04-09T19:35:17+00:00April 8th, 2015|Poetry, stages of life|

I will kiss
the feet
of my mother.
I am not ashamed
to bow down
towards grass, wet
with clear sky
water. I will bow
down to her
who birthed me,
in whose center
I was housed,
in whose waters
I swam,
from conception
to the coming out.
Bow down
to her
who gave me
life, kiss the flesh–
each digit
achy with gout,
the tireless travel
of the old,
the bearing
of things unseen.

Harvester of wheat
and planter of seeds,
the farmland
and the plow,
where her hands
touched soft,
cold earth
crumbling
through fingers,
the bearing
of flesh
that rose up
out of her,
rising still,
her children’s
children,
and then theirs.

I bow down
to my human statue,
my stronghold.
Sun comes down,
and the light
around her head
is white. And I, last
born, on my knees
before her, kiss
the bones underneath
the skin, the toes
that ache with year,
eighty-one peeled down
like skins
of island fruit,
each one bearing
sweet flesh within,
and the bitter pit
we all must come to.

This she plants again
and sees it rise, not
from window,
but from her place
in skies,
when, after years,
she will go on
living in clouds,
between suns,
looking down
on this ground,
where her feet stood,
planted.

by Marian Haddad