My Other Mother

To Sima Mizrachi

Dark Woman with Dark eyes

you reached out to me

took me as your own

Those Arms

such weathered olive branches

held me

your Boundless Humor

shook me

 Solid you Stand

Wise with Fruit

Gift of your Heart’s Intelligence

*

I miss you my dark mother

 Warmth of Countless

Years of Gathered Sunshine

*

once the center of your tribe

You are its very Essence

*

Sima

Sima

*

On This Day

*

On this Day

I write for You

*

On this Day

Our Memories Collide

Merge and Coalesce

make us that Single

Person with so many Others

where, with amalgamated

memories potentiating

each other

we become a part

of something so much Bigger

*

our personal wills ineffective

we can only feel

and re-feel

*

a Spiral of ever increasing

and decreasing

Intensity

*

On this Day

you and I

are One

Encompassing a Body

of Millions

*

whether of The Murdered

 The Survivors

or The Saved

we are them

and each other

For a Day

*

On this Day

I write for Us

*

The World Without You

You Say

you don’t belong

here anymore

*

weary of a world

changing so fast

your Spirit

flails

in the loneliness

of your words

*

I pause

*

the Origin of my life,

I  never imagined

you Elsewhere

than part of it

Now

unwelcome

and inevitable

the notion of your absence

prods me

*

I see

a Dimming

momentary

for the planet

but Permanent in

my chambers,

the ones built

with Your Blood

*

golden Mayo cropped

  My mother, Marilyn Cashman Nahas is 83

Very lucky to still have her in my life.

*

The Sundering

To All My Sisters

 

Smooth Roundness

such Bells of Flesh

calling to Feed

both body and soul

Ring out in their Sensuous

appeal for tenderness

These bells, Embodiment

of how we nurture Life into Being

and Being into Humanity,

these fine bells

tense and loud at first

then longer

more Sonorous with Time,

extensions of our heart’s Fiber

like limbs of deeper giving

*

To sever these bells

is to remove our outward

manifestation

as Life Givers

it comes at great sacrifice

endows us, yes,

with a profounder grasp

of our responsibility

as Thrones of Life,

still

Bereavement

arises first

*

Art Work By Yaron Rosner

Art Work By Yaron Rosner

5PM

It’s time to get out of the community center

I rise, call my cubs to me: “We’re getting a ride, let’s go.”

Full moon oncoming like a tidal wave

PMS hanging me by the skin of my Sacrum

it is time to make for the door

Breathe dense oxygen, the illusion of relief

just a minute’s worth,  anything will do

 

The other lioness whose shoulder slowly rises

as she languidly mounts the steps

speaks to me in 2 dimensions only

explains everything she says,

I must look challenged

“No, I’m not frowning, just a bit tired”

I jump up onto the sidewalk and start slowly down the street

my pups trailing in front of me

The other lioness pushes her pram with her mouth

still manages to ask questions

 

Why don’t the dark clouds here bring rain?

why do they move on?

My ears are buzzing

I count the cobblestones with my paws,

soon to collapse in my den

feed and bathe my young

send them to bed with a Sigh

Art Work By Yaron Rosner

Art Work By Yaron Rosner

Stepping into the History of my Condition

I watch a backdrop of raging flames

bundles of crackling faggots

the Thunderous wind generated

by the Heat of eight million women

rising in great Billowing black clouds

*

Distant wails for the mother, sister, wife,

and a Hardening

of the spirit in those who Survive

*

A Deadened silence creeps before the roaring fire

only to Release from its fumes single women

distinguishing themselves in a New world

fabricated by men. The lonely individuals

become many, until I see my own Grandmothers

walking towards me, one upheld by the Steel

of her Choices, the other crippled by hers.

From the Ashes of their Ancestors, the painstakingly

slow but necessary demand for Repairs.

*

Stepping into the history of my condition

I step into the Sacrifice made by millions

of Women for their descendants,

from the Wreckage, the Burgeoning

of ancient wisdom put to Sleep for centuries,

kissed long enough, it Awakens,

stretches its limbs and with deepened

but ready Eyes, meets the carrier

of its Continuance.

Fire

Carriers

We are Reminded

 we are but Carriers

that our children come Through us

not From us

Born of our Bodies

so hard to Fathom

their Well being

not entirely our Responsibility

No matter the Rational

championing personality, Independent Perspective

Free Will-

Deep down

in the very Fiber of our Flesh

We will Not let go

of what originated in our Bowel

Cannot but Feel bound

to their Existence

No matter the reasoning:

“They are their Own”

from the Cavernous depths

a Primeval utterance intones:

They Are Mine

Ancient Mesopotamian Seated Goddess

Ancient Mesopotamian Seated Goddess

His Mother’s Hand

 

Art work by Yaron Rosner

Art work by Yaron Rosner

He sleeps now,

the deepest of Sleep.

Like every night

he called her to him

she went, took his hand

listened to the pain

his labored breathing

the panic in his voice

watched the grown man

shriveled in a fetal thirty nine kilos,

this Child always struggled

her First Born,

fifty four years ago

she gave him Life

His hand Desperately holding hers

Releases, at last

He sleeps

Exhausted she put herself to bed

Dozed til daybreak

when silence woke her

she hurried to her Birthday Boy

found him still asleep

and knew it then

 to be forever