My Mothers

I have mother issues
So I live by the sea
Surrounded to east, west and north.
My mother lives to the south.
I am surrounded by
My mother,
The one with many names.

My first mother
Had no name
No face
No specific shape,
Just a quiet liquid
Darkness.
Her primal
Primordial
Uterine waters:
Blood with purpose.
She is called womb.

My second mother
Brought me forth
From the depths.
She had the shape
Of a river with
A persimmon floating,
Flowing downriver.
And her hair was like seaweed,
A nest.
Sometimes I think I’m still in it
Somewhere.
She was a tiger
Wearing mouse fur.
She is called Marie Yoko.

My third mother
Had a dozen names
A hundred talents
And a thousand petals.
She grew like a scrubby oak,
Bent and contorted:
A subject of life in the old days,
Subject to the elements.
She was a woman
In a male-dominated century.
She was a woman
Who made her own damn world
Defied custom
Outran bullets
Married for love’s sake
Hand wove rugs
Spoke nine languages
And was 4’10”.
She could have conquered the world
If not for arthritis.
That’s my grandmother,
She made my second mother.
She is called Jigar.

My fourth mother
Is constantly pregnant.
She is continually
Nursing
Her countless children.
She is beyond description....
Her blue becomes green
Her green becomes brown
Her browns are yellow
And red runs below.
Her blood refreshes,
Her blood fertilizes,
Magnetic and dense,
Floating
Through the Milky Way
The Hammered Bracelet
The Path of the Ancestors.
She is a fertile egg,
A cloudy womb.
She is called Earth.

My fifth mother
Is a mirror,
She is what I would be
Without skin.
She is dressed in scales
Wearing seaweed for hair,
Her eyes are pearls
And her sex is apparent
With receding tides.
My mother is a storm
Turned upside down.
She is what defines
The land:
She has yielded
The firms
And blessed us
With salt.
She calls me daily
And she surrounds me.
She is called the sea.

My sixth mother
Gets between my toes,
Under my nails
And stains my pants.
She is playful
Childish
Wise
And ancient.
She teaches me
With leaves and feathers,
Her text is stone
And her words are spoken
By trees.
One would think her sad
With these rains of sorrow...
Few understand
Her need to quench this thirst
For remaining
Eternally green.
She is this land,
She is a dragon.
We’ll call her that.

I have mother issues
So I live by the sea.
I live upon a dragon’s scale
I ride a serpent
Surfing a planet
Walking a path
Strewn about the ancestral sky;
And this Earth,
Like me,
Emerging within
The shapeless
Primordial darkness:
This universe
The eternal mother.