My Mother

There is an acid in my mother's tears
And Traitors in her lap
That sprang from the tears of Judas.
Her gown, once a thousand shades of Beautiful
Now rots to a putrid brown
And is swept away by tiny, betraying hands,
Until there is no gown left at all.
She longs to sigh,
But all the air has turned to fog,
Sticking in her nostrils and burning her lungs.
She cannot laugh because her children
Are disobeying her.
My mother can't listen to the birds sing -
They've all died in their cages
And even she doesn't have the key
To unlock the rusted cages to bury the birds,
Songs still sweet in their forever silent throats.
A lot of my mother's more innocent children have died.
The pretty ones with yellow wings,
The four-footed swift ones who chased the wind,
And the fast swimming scaled ones.
My mother can't do anything at all
Because her children don't come
When she calls to them anymore,
The more "REAL" and "SOPHISTICATED" ones fight each other.
She can't ignore that they're killing her too.
Her children are dying on her lap
And fail to hear her cry for help.
My mother loves us all and never once
Asked anything but love in return.
She gave us her sweet flowing water,
But we polluted it until it was fire.
Her tears didn't always burn your hands
     When they fell from her eyes.
Once they washed and refreshed and made green things
               THROB
          And lust for life.
Because of YOU and ME,
A lot of her Children are dead or gone,
Yanked from milk cartons and cereal boxes
Because morticians and their kind
Proved DEATH beyond any reasonable suspicion.
If we could for one moment look beyond
The masks and the choking fog
That has become our one sole reality,
We may see we all share the same
     Great Mother
The one who is fatally wounded
By chain saws, axes and chimney smoke pollution.
Drop the fog makers, the chain saws and masks.
Our Mother is dying,
At least be respectful!
If she dies, we'll all attend the funeral
In our own eternal coffins,
And what of our existence then?
Our Mother is not quite dead yet.
Do you care? I mean it - Do you care?
Do you even understand, sisters and brothers,
The One Great Mother I speak of
     OUR Mother
Is Mother Earth?


by H. W., Bedford, MA