May 16: The Mother Secret
By Sophie Strand
I have a secret. you are — whether moss, falcon, mycelium, or lonely dawn-watcher at the riverside, a mother. And you are mothered. By the galactic complexity in your gut, by seasons and pollen and footstep sucking mud, by the twin wings of your lungs, by the green wind that comes to gently tuck a curl behind your ear. Your body mothers you.
And child-like you nuzzle deep inside other bodies. Forest bodies. Spore bodies. Weather bodies as blue and vast as fabric. A man can mother his own mother. A little girl on the mountain, mothers the summit. The lichen shepherds a salamander across the trail. A woman can mother herself, tenderly, by making the coffee strong enough, placing the tulips in a butter-circle of sun on the windowsill.
I know your wound is salt-rimed and stings. I know you ache for lullabies, a memory of haven, sound and natural as a swallow’s nest. But here, let me give you a world-large gift. A gift you also give me.
Everybody is a mother. Everybody can turn to the other and offer a song, a wink, a fierce embrace.