This is another blog serial. Ope.
It did not please my mother to exist this way, never to be her own but merely an extension.
Oh but how she also loved it. The drama of it, the transformation. The rhythmic dance of death and renewal she so enjoyed. She was praised for it, and feared. Her mother as dependent upon her
return as she was the acceptance.
They were beautiful together, so far from me. So mysterious.
I was loved for things out of my control, and by everything but the moonlight. My hair, like spun gold, flew behind me wherever I ran, a banner of victory I wore with pride. The wind would sing about
it, the birds to the clouds and sky. Rays of sun would dance within it. The rain and snow would caress it.
But then at moonrise my gilded locks would become muted, dwarfed by the hypnotic glow of my mother and hers, in all her resplendence. No more birds would sing, tucked away they were within crevices and nooks. Any rain that fell would mat it to my face. Any snow would hide it.
How many times had I gone to the creek and muddied my hair within its water? To show her I was not growing against her, that any beauty I held was worth less than any she could show to me?
How often had I crawled along the pointed peaks of the Mountain just to drag my hair in the dust?
If I could afford to not give her reason to hate me, I would do it.
I learned quickly that if I got any pleasure from lying in the sun I dare not show her, lest be at her mercy. I could not help myself, however. Even though the pain of invisibility was unbearable, I would lay out, arms wide, on the deep warmth of my father’s back as I tried to pull in every last drop of sun before it slipped into the waters which surrounded us. My mother would already be high above, trickling down from her mother moon, and she would see my betrayal. In those final rays of daylight she could not reach me but I knew
she would again. Soon.
How foolish I was to tempt her.
Moonlight touches all. You can hide from it, certainly, but then you are left alone and in darkness. It was almost worse sharing her.
This story, which I am breaking into an online serial to release every-other Saturday, is the original incarnation of my recently published poetry books My Mother, the Moonbeam and My Father, the Mountain. Posts related to each of those books are also included in this blog, offering additional information and insight to the poems. You can find more information on books, events, and the blog at http://www.faunalewiswrites.com
Fauna Lewis Writes 