A Poem for my Mother at Easter

Eggs. Fertility. Baby chicks and rabbits--the pagan roots of Easter run through the feminine.



Lemberg Castle with its red roofs and mountain surround.

While I was born in 1950, the egg that created me was born in my maternal grandmother in the late 1800's, not far from Lemberg Castle in Galicia. 

She left everything she knew and loved to immigrate to America when she was only fifteen. Because she died before I was born, what I know of her spirit has come to me through my mother, through the pulsating chains of light we share in our DNA.

This poem in praise of that power.   

 

 Redeemer          

My mother on her knees one Sunday in Lent

bent to check the soil to divine

which bulbs survived the winter’s freeze

to bring the green come Easter.

She wore no gloves in spite of icy air,

and the memory of red polish on her nails

suggests something I couldn’t see then,

some sympathetic magic that could do more

than mend the frayed edges of my coat

or untangle snarls in my hair,

some sacrament that could make new tulips

rise up red against the faded fence

when fasting days finally ended

in the communion of colored eggs

and chocolate. On that day,

all of the ashes would be kissed from my brow,

because Mother on her knees one morning in Lent

bent to resurrect bouquets, indifferent to mud

that drenched  the hem of her Sunday dress.