This is another blog serial. Ope.
My father was a mountain, steadfast and absolute. He was as affording in opportunities as he was merciless. You could not come upon him and dismiss him, and if your passage through his realm
included him then his mark would clearly be upon you for everything about him was sharp — his features, his mind, his resoluteness. He could cut you with a word and very often did.
He was solid as mountains go. You could spend the time to chink away but there was nothing more to be found but the same beauty; what was in the open continued soul-deep. There were no dark
and empty pockets within, though often he did some shifting in attempts to keep who he was for himself. But he was ever-giving. If it was a pond you needed to draw from or a patch of moss on which
to rest then he would reveal them readily.
If my father a mountain, then my mother was the moonlight: temporary yet inevitable. She was beautiful and terrifying. The tides, which stilled for no man, would fall to glass beneath her stare. Her
surface she roamed was scarred and pocked with secrets which she put on full display, but the stories of which she kept behind her mother’s back. If you were to attempt an understanding she would only smile back at you.
How many times I had seen my mother reach out to touch that mountain? To touch all parts of it, reach every rock with her cool luminescence. To always know all of its secrets yet not even let on that she herself had secrets to keep? Of course the mountain welcomed it, basked in the light, reveled in it, for what mountain would care to worry about the dark side of the moon when its brilliant face shone upon him?
And I, then, perhaps a stream that ran from one to serve the other, fluid within my banks and with depths in which to hide. Within which my mother could not reach.
Or perhaps a tree upon his back, grown from a foundation of rock, cradled in that same beautiful light. With a back of my own straight and true, with roots that twined down and leaves that flew up.
But I am neither the stream nor the tree. Instead, where the moonlight kissed the mountainside sprang a small greenery. A pale bulb, fat and simple and nondescript. A being which yearned for soil but was laid upon rock; which required sunlight but was lifted to receive stark coolness of the night instead.
So many beautiful things come from both mountain and moonlight, yet somehow I grew to be everything that came short in both.
Where the mountain dug deep into the earth, forever down to its core, I was laid bare upon its surface. Where his brow was dark and set, mine ticked up. Against his skin of weighted mantle was mine of feather-thin vegetation. The wind and rain could not tempt him to move, only to change, if he wished it, but I was at their mercy.
Difficult it was for someone to pass a mountain without
circumstance, but a green smear high on his side would only be found by those seeking it out; wanderers did not point to smears to get their bearings.
And then what of the moon! Of her beauty and her charm. Even when she was unwelcome she was still wanted. Not much could be done by her but absolutely nothing could be done without her.
Where she could turn away, where she could keep parts of herself always hidden, I was surrounded by her light. Her eyes could always seek me even when I was unable to see.
She was prominent and proud and gave little away; the bits of myself were small but forthcoming.
But then there was a price to be paid for being the daughter of the moon. Daughter of the moonlight, too, and daughter of mountain, sure, but there are many mountains and much moonlight.
But to be a daughter of the moon, like my mother.
My mother herself hated the moon. She wished to be free from it but she was tethered. It did not matter how far she traveled from it, for one toe or finger must always remain lest she lose herself to
the ether. And she would, many times, only to find her way back and cling to her mother in forgiveness, to beg to return. Of course the moon took her back, how could she not?
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 