Each of us has had a mother

[PrinceMyshkin]

We knew her only in that singular,
huge role, those life- and comfort-giving
breasts, those arms on which we rested
as we suckled, as securely as we ever would
in our lovers’ arms, our fortress built
upon a hill or in some gated or otherwise
safe community. We knew her in those eyes
that looked down tenderly as we drank
from her. Before we had words we did not
think her “mother” but life. We were
a perfect, closed symbiotic system
then: she gave life to us and we
gave her an occasion to love
beyond her wildest dreams. We never knew
her as the one-time school-girl, dreamer
of diverse dreams, the bride, young wife,
that once she’d been. We did not know her
as Mabel or Kate or Jessica or Ann,
those names and personae by which others
knew and cherished--or chafed-–her.

And we grew up to be bankers or poets,
fathers or mothers ourselves. Some of us,
alas, troubled by this or that, grew up
cruel or confused, lashing out.
Some of us are dry, wretched, bitter
and aching to hurt someone or other.

And yet each of us has had a mother.