“I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.” Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

Note: This is the third in a three-part series celebrating Mothers’ Day, which is today in the U.S.. All the pieces were published some time ago – here and/or elsewhere and it just feels right to publish again this year. I hope you’ll enjoy this short series … And ♥ Happy Mothers’ Day to all the mothers and to all the dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents and older siblings who are covering for moms who are gone.♥

sometimes …
near impossible to see past the manic crowds
or to lift our eyes to look at the wholesome
trees inscribing their calm upon the sky

sometimes …
we record our fears with writing utensils,
call them weapons, coloring the margins
of our books with the dry dust of martyrdom

sometimes …
the children use their pages to blot away their
mothers’ tears, turning backs on the old refrains,
hearing their own souls speak, deaf to their fathers

sometimes …
those children fell trees, transforming them
to paper and well-sharpened pencils, their lives
written in the manner of their own separate peace

“Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.” John Knowles, A Separate Peace

Originally published in Brooklyn Memories

© 2013, poem, Jamie Dedes; illustration courtesy of Dawn Hudson, Public Domain Pictures.net

ABOUT

Testimonials

Disclosure

Facebook

Twitter

School days

Poet and writer, I am a former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently, I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

5 Comments

  1. Respected Jamie Ji
    Happy Mothers’ Day to You and Thank you for the most touching emotional and superb Edition of the Bezine On Line. Deeply grateful to you for the honor of having a poem publishing among a dazzling cluster of highly talented and gifted poets and writers.
    I wish to share some more lines I wrote on ‘Peace with Mother’ It is a memory of my first day at school and what I now would call the Second Movement’ of one’s Life when one has to leave the childhood comfort zone for a purpose unknown at that stage and start facing the outside world.
    Hope you find them worthy of your page.

    Mother , You Are A Peace Maker’

    Mother took me to a place new
    unknown unfamiliar people around,
    I felt afraid ,I cried, ,I held hard onto
    her coat sleeve-I was pulled away

    I shivered as if put in a cold water pool
    Mother, for my good, left me in a school-
    Mother looked down at me silently
    and I pleaded silently as I looked up’

    Then I saw her no more ,tears slipped
    back, mind still ,thoughtless I sat on a stool
    all I saw was a large blackboard, someone
    tall by its side, arms moving, as if in a duel,

    wearing a long straight white gown-
    I just sat and looked I felt lost, my peaceful
    world broke, then sounds like bells I did hear,
    then dry for a while were the eyes, no tear’-

    Mother Dear where are you’ I thought
    I am looking all over for you’ around
    and now I know that my peace is where-
    in Mother’s love it is, it is in her care,

    Mother please know you are the best
    care taker…Mother you are the only
    real peace maker’ now I am sure
    Peace Can Come surely, if only, Mother is there.

    From My Peace Poems Collection 2017

    Like

    Reply

Thank you!