Mother Rita

Two beautiful foreheads pressed together,
we make a canopy of our steepled arms
and place our love here.
Palm to palm.
Fingers interlaced and hooked in rapture.

Hard knuckles of white against white,
we cling to this brittle branch of dreaming
where, for a hollow moment,
I hold you in the whole of me.

Was it the hungry cub, pawing out for its mother's milk
which woke me --
Startled beneath the quick blanket
that jerked the wind from my lungs?

It was then that I first saw you, Great Mother.
Oh how the rounds of your eyes
were so brown! As dark as the wet forest trunk
is heavy,
with earth's ancient groaning.

I found you on your bathroom floor
and fell to my knees
at the cords of your robe.

You were a shrine. My shrine!
Crumpled up on the cold square tiles.
A precious stone burnished over time --

One part coal and one part diamond.
Riddled with the disease
which snakes its way up your sternum,
and sinks its pointed teeth deep into your spine.

This is you, and you are not a dream!
Together,
we cry and coo.
Twittering as the doves do
on your back porch stoop.

I press the top of your head with my lips, feeling
your soft hair, wrapping
myself up in your juniper scent,
my wet tears pounding you with kisses.