Motherlight

By Clara Blair

What are you doing in my mirror?
You are only an idea to me,
Existing only in old photographs and
My mother’s memories.

Now I’m much older than you.
What can we say to that, and to her,
The one who loves us both.
She is our prism, the warm crystal
In whom both our lights are bent
And glorified.

Two pictures worth a thousand questions,
Lit with the DaVinci smile on your Germanic face,
Provoke just one -–
How can I touch you?

Before I was conceived, you died.
And my motherless mother began
The woman-task of daughter-teaching,
Knowing only what you’d told her,
And not all that you knew.

What you’d told her came slowly,
Through her mourning and her youth.
What you knew came later,
Letting me see the need
And find the pain and price and joy
Of choosing my own way.

You are a stranger, but you shine for me
Like a star whose dying light
Gives beauty in the evening
To a place far away.

©2003 Clara Blair