You Beneath my Wings

Together

You Beneath my Wings

Everything I do is done with you beneath my wings,

nested in the curve of my feathered heart.

My two small ones, divine and outrageously human,

sticky handed and thick lashed,

smooth and bellied and infinitely soft,

with your powerful primal forces,

one minute a lullaby the next a storm,

as you ride the furious currents of your own becomings,

human, embodied , relational.

When I am humble,

I am gifted the chance of learning the universe anew,

seeing with eyes reclaimed by your innocence,

 I am gifted awe and the most tender workings of truth

in my innermost heart,

as you birth me back to wholeness.

What could be more pressing than this?

Nothing more true than this fierce intent to care,

to indwell the peaceful solution in each and every moment,

the way you unwittingly call me on my own withholding,

the way your innocence and expression

illuminates in me my own artifice,

my own investment in the outcome

that may not always be of service

to the asking of the moment.

Yet it is true I sometimes struggle

against the smallness that you ask of me,

with each step to stay small with you,

with the eye that will see the bug in the blossom

or the hole in your sock

or the answer to the riddles that you pose.

You call upon the part of me

that is happy for the washing of dishes to take an hour

and that by the end, the floor will be drenched

and two new dry outfits required.

The part that values the quality of the moment

over what is achieved,

the part that must accept

that often nothing gets done

except the growing of our inner lives.

Sometimes I feel your wings

stretching out above me as you soar out

into a future without me in it

and I grasp the magnitude of this work,

that with my body I have created something,

alive and vital that blessed be will outlive me,

that I birthed you into being

and that with each breath

I must bring my will to bear

in the task of your care.

That you ask of me always to find

a deeper resource of love within me,

that you ask me always to be more patient,

aware, present and awake

than I would ever have felt possible

in the moment before your asking.

As through my own inertia,

I enact my love,

as you ask of me in every moment

to overcome myself,

as you, my flesh and blood,

move beyond the edges of me,

and call for me to come after.

The potent weight of your hand in mine,

the wild tangle of your hair

when I have looked away from it too long,

the hungry clutch of you awake in the night,

the desperation of your need for comfort

and the fact that you will accept no less

than the all of me.

As you grow I grow.

And then there are the days when I look out at the world,

twinkling so brightly and moving so fast

and it is as though we live in a different universe,

ours the time of the turning planet

and the growing seed in the dark Earth,

the creeping season and the creaking forest....

The time span in which it appears

that despite a constant business,

nothing ever happens,

just this imperceptible transmutation,

amidst all the minute and unseen tasks

that ask for me to be like unto nothing.

Sometimes I forget that you are both so tender still,

tucked beneath my skirts,

so wholly dependent on me

in a way that I still sometimes find unimaginable,

the ask of that much surrender.

Sometimes I stride out into my life with bold abandon

and then am left with the quandary

of how to be more than one thing at once.

And sometimes I hear the great whispering Mother

telling me to be still, rest deep

and be the great mountain on whom my children can climb,

themselves oblivious to the possibility

that it could be any other way,

than this vast deep holding of the mother love,

as I wrestle beneath, in the constant dance of surrender,

to grow my heart, to grow my capacity to love

so that I can hold true to you,

the precious fruits of my womb,

my gifting to life

and the unfolding of our tomorrow.

Lucy Pierce © 2013