However differently it is expressed, there is nothing like the love of a mother. Two years ago yesterday my mother passed away. And it is the belovedness I felt from her that I most miss. That’s what this poem is about, the irreplaceable love of a mother.

Mom’s Tear

As I pulled away from her house
It became a lasting memory
Before her decline to death:
Through the kitchen window
Dad’s hands on her shoulders
She gazed on me
And wiped away a tear.

Mom’s tear –
Over the decades it anointed
My departures and hers.
She anointed
Knowing all my failures
All my flaws
All my outbursts
All the ways my self worth
Was grounded in sources
Which threaten
My self worth.

Mom’s tear –
It filled a well enabling me to go on
Through the being misunderstood

The absences of an ear toward my life

The dark days of doubt

The deceptions seeking sabotage
The grudges from long past
Suddenly and severely revealed
As if they
Happened only yesterday.

 

Her tear said:
“What you did do, didn’t do,
Achieved, fell short of,
This is not what defines you.”
It branded me with searing fire:
As fully listened to.
Fully understood.
Fully interesting.
Fully missed.
As who I am, as who I am not.
As fully, forever, indelibly, beloved.