Happy Mother's Day!

This mother's day, in honor of all the wonderful women in my life...from mothers to grandmothers to sisters and sisters-in-law, to daughters and beautiful friends, a repost of two poems by a pair of my favorite poets:

Antistrophes

Ah, women, that you are here on earth, that you

move here among us, grief-filled,

no more watched over than we and yet able

to bless like the blessed.

From what region,

when the loved one appears,

do you take the future?

More than will ever exist.

He who knows distances

up to the outermost fixed star

is amazed to find this,

your magnificent heartspace.

How, in the crush, do you keep it free?

--Rainer Maria Rilke

TO MY MOTHER

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

--Wendell Berry