Mothering

I watched a kindred one shine tonight as she told of brushes and line.
Grandmother, mother, artist and woman,
She sang a few bars and glowed in the love,
For all there loved her.
It was clear that the Spirit of the Creator had come to the created.
And we longed to be as her.

I asked in my heart,
Will I one day take to the sky?
A sparrow darting to and fro in careless boheme?

Will I one day bubble up like a spring when now the only movement I feel within my dry earth is the turning of fallow ground?

Will I one day pick up the skirt about my legs and dance again?

I feel like a shadow of myself.

I feel the dark umber of my season form me into oily shadows.

I fear this mothering has diminished me.
It has nursed me into a sketch,
An outline of myself.

But the color is coming.

As the creator works,
his hand paints me to life
The hollow of my cheeks flush and are a  map of who I am.

The Spirit of the work was there right from the beginning.
The master knew the portrait long before the masterpiece longed for the revealing.

And so I sit upon the easel,
In the gaze of all the eyes who look at me
Those eyes that endlessly plead with me to move them and teach them
To watch over them and stir them
To spend my tender years
Drying and curing.

Those Eyes that know all things
My dreams and ticking clocks.
And so I submit to this burden and joy

I will stand before them
Like she stood before us babes longing to grow up to be her.

And ready myself for the day I fly
Bubbling over
dancing
In the fullness of life.