Yemojá

 

 

Great blue star within us.

Our mother is water, our mother is everywhere.

Now placid, now raging,

bubbled foam flying high.

In clouds you repose

and in torrents race against the spinning earth,

always winning.

Who can conquer you?

Sweet-lipped source of life,

whose first young ones were blind cells,

we open our mouths to say your name,

knowing you hear us.

We open our eyes to see you,

and you rise into our sight, shimmering.

Our eyes are filled with water;

how can they not see you everywhere?

 

The moon desires the ocean,

the heron kisses the river,

the rose loves the rain.

In measure and in timing you delight,

for swimming is not drowning,

for drizzle is not flood.

The banks are where the stream stops;

the shore, where waves curl into sleep.

You could take us all just as you gave us ourselves;

you rise from the deeps with a dagger in your teeth,

you shine in the darkness with serpents on your arms.

You leave us reminders everywhere.

 

Striding over tidal pools as crabs lift their pincers,

growing green and dank below dead trees,

diffusing in the brightening fog of morning,

upright in the stems of grass

and snoring in swan-haunted swamps.

Trembling in blank white seizures of snow.

In sadness tears stream down our cheeks

because you are first to comfort us,

and in laughter after you wash clean.

 

O mother

of my heart and my becoming,

O mother titanic and molecular,

tender and distant, regal and near,

unapproachable, unavoidable,

cobalt and sapphire

cloudburst of compassion.

Nothing we can say honors you enough,

and you smile, knowing

our mouths and our minds

are too small for our hearts to leap through,

our hearts pumping the love you poured into them,

love as horizonless as seventy seas.

Preserve us, keep us poised on the white-capped tide of you,

admonish us and renew us.

 

O mother so wonderful

proud and everywhere.

 

 

 

© 2000 Gregor Everitt