Happy Mother’s Day to a dear aunt,A refuge from conditions and demands,Perhaps because you have a different slant,Perhaps because your love is free of plans.Yet for whatever reason, you are thereMore simply and directly than the other,One with whom a child can always shareThe kinds of joys too carefree for a mother.Happiness can use a bit of room,Even in the midst of an embrace.Relevance requires not the womb:‘Tis love and labor that replenish grace.So do you play this secondary part,Dealt not by birth but by the willing heart,Aunt extraordinaire, whose love will bringYears of memories that dance and sing.

Happy Mother’s Day to a dear aunt,A refuge from conditions and demands,Perhaps because you have a different slant,Perhaps because your love is free of plans.Yet for whatever reason, you are thereMore simply and directly than the other,One with whom a child can always shareThe kinds of joys too carefree for a mother.Happiness can use a bit of room,Even in the midst of an embrace.Relevance requires not the womb:‘Tis love and labor that replenish grace.So do you play this secondary part,Dealt not by birth but by the willing heart,Aunt extraordinaire, whose love will bringYears of memories that dance and sing.

I miss you, but I cannot make you miss me.I need you, but you do not know my need.I want you, but I cannot make you kiss me.I suffer, but I cannot make you bleed.I beseech you, but you will not be beguiled.The door’s locked, and you will not let me in.You’re my mother*, but I cannot be your child.I’ve lost you, and I can’t take back my sin.Like an earth no longer with its sun,Shooting towards eternity alone,I no longer circle anyone,An aimless, mindless, wandering piece of stone.Ah, Mother*! It would be so sad if weWould journey through to darkness separately.*”father” if to a fathe

I call you “Ma,” though you are not my mother,But more a ma than any ma could be.I’ve come to love you more than any other;You took me in your charge and set me free.You let me run and kissed me when I fell;You kept your eyes on me and let me stray.I learned things hard, which means I learned them well,And got to know myself along the way.My hope and faith and pride are all from you.My roots are in your heart; you are my home.You will be part of everything I do,In all my thoughts a wise and lovely poem.For all our lives we’ll have this common ground:You were my rock when else I would have drowned.

Happiness, like most things, comes from mothers.An amniotic universe is rare.Paradises aren’t found with others,Perhaps because we must breathe our own air.Yet even after paradise, we findMothers are a bath of warm affection.Only mothers’ love is truly blindTo guarantee all errant souls protection.However we find love, it can be onlyEvanescences of memoriesRetained from when we never could be lonely,‘Ere we left our mother’s outsized knees.So good it is to have that happinessDesigned to grace each subsequent caress,All future love and joy to underlie,Yearning backwards towards a mother’s sigh.

Her life was not as glorious as some,Devoted to her children and their children,Taken up by quiet tedium:What’s left when dreams are scattered to the wind.She loved too well, perhaps, and fought too hardTo make a marriage work that wasn’t right.She was, of all bright loveliness, a shardStruck off to bring our lives the gift of light.There are those whose lives are shaped by love;Whose pleasures, rich and full, are found in giving;Who make our wild hearts bloom and passions moveInto measured fields made lush by living.Without her all the gold’s gone from the day;She will be missed far more than we can say.

Her life was not as glorious as some,Devoted to her children and their children,Taken up by quiet tedium:What’s left when dreams are scattered to the wind.She loved too well, perhaps, and fought too hardTo make a marriage work that wasn’t right.She was, of all bright loveliness, a shardStruck off to bring our lives the gift of light.There are those whose lives are shaped by love;Whose pleasures, rich and full, are found in giving;Who make our wild hearts bloom and passions moveInto measured fields made lush by living.Without her all the gold’s gone from the day;She will be missed far more than we can say.

I wait upon the love that waits for meUnknowing as I grow within the womb,The creature of an unheard harmonyBetween the voices of my dawn and doom.Half of me is you: how strange! Yet moreUncanny is the fact that we are two.I live within a room whose only doorFor good or ill must open onto you.Be there for me, father*, in your heart,As I for you will be the child you will.Play with all your love the father’s* part,And I will with my love your dreams fulfill.I will rebel, of course, but pay no mind:Years of love will stand against the wind.*(For a mother, change to “mother” and “mother’s.”)

Although consumed by fury, you still loved us.At least that is the knowledge of my heart.Screaming like a child, you would beat usUntil you snapped, and then the tears would start.“You know I love you,” you would cry, demandingMore of us through tears than with your fist.And we, through tears, would nod our understanding,Too bullied in our pain to dare resist.Yet now that you’ve been dead for many years,And I have wandered through my own vast hell,I see the desperate anguish in your tearsAnd hope at last that I can love you well.For only in my love can your love beThe love that once, I think, you had for me.

How can you know how much you mean to me?After all the heartache, there is love.Pierce life, and you are where the angels move,Praising with their joy the mystery.You know well the cost of sacrifice,Mothering the wounded as you bleed,Opening your anguish to their need,Taking heed of neither pain nor price.How you have paid, dear soul, for that abandon!Even as you’ve sunk into despair.Reason has no reason to be there‘Ere love supply the grace, wellearned or wanton.So let me show you how you look from here,Depicted as an icon dearly treasured,An image of an ecstasy unmeasured,Yearning with more need than it can bear.

Happiness can also be a haunting,A text one can recite but cannot read.Peace need not erase the need for need,Pressed to a perfection one finds daunting.Yet often one can win with little warning,Mothering the plant without the seed,Of help in breeding though of different breed,Taking pleasure in another’s dawning.How one feels depends on how one chooses,Embracing always less that what one wills,Redeeming even tragedy with passion‘Mid the sinking tapestries of night.So may you find the courage that refusesDominion to the clarity that kills,Awakening the mother that might fashionYearning strong enough to see the light.

Daughtersinlaw are our grandchildren’s mothers.As such, they carry our fortunes downstream.Under their guidance, our hopes become others’,Giving their force to a much larger dream.How lucky we are to have you for the carerThat nurtures the hearts of our hearts, that they mayEach be a lover, a giver and sharer,Remaking the world in their image each day.So do we all, like streams from the mountains,In time become joined in the souls we have made,Now mingled forever, eternal companions,Linked by our love in a bond that won’t fade.As you in your noontime your work of love do,We watch from the hillside, grateful for you

Happy Mother’s Day from far away!As love has wings, it flies across the sea,Passing seraphim alight with glee,Placed in nooks on clouds along its way.Years cannot such innocence betray,Morning’s holy light perpetuallyOn fire within the heart, a pillar weThen follow through the desert night and day.Here, then, is my love, and as it lands,Exchange it for a pigeon of your own,Returning through the heavens what I once,‘Ere you were born, delivered to your door.So are we eternal, though the sandsDemand of us that piece that is on loan,As love renews, renews the ancient dance,Yet dancing though the wide world be no more.

Love has never been about the genes,But about beauty, and unforgiving grace.The wolf that suckled Romulus and RemusHad nothing in her heart but wrenching joy.Oh, yes, of course, love also is a means,Serving the survival of the race.But more, it is a longing that redeems us,An end itself no ending can destroy.And so it is with mothers who love childrenNot of their flesh, but of their nurturing.The origin fades, the years of love remainVivid in the background of a life.For Rome, the wolf will always be its kindred,Ancestor who took fate’s offeringAnd made it hers through sacrifice and pain,The legacy that would her long days light

Love has never been about the genes,But about beauty, and unforgiving grace.The wolf that suckled Romulus and RemusHad nothing in her heart but wrenching joy.Oh, yes, of course, love also is a means,Serving the survival of the race.But more, it is a longing that redeems us,An end itself no ending can destroy.And so it is with mothers who love childrenNot of their flesh, but of their nurturing.The origin fades, the years of love remainVivid in the background of a life.For Rome, the wolf will always be its kindred,Ancestor who took fate’s offeringAnd made it hers through sacrifice and pain,The legacy that would her long days light.