A Mother's Love: A Triptych Poem

Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash

I.
In falling to pieces I somehow broke you, too.
My desperate ache for kindness sent yours fleeing.
Your outer walls hard, you think yourself strong.
The chasm at your core has made you brittle instead.
As storm clouds gather and wind whips the trees, 
will you topple and shatter, as I did?

II. 
My dear one, I am so sorry that the lessons you learned from me brought trembling and doubt.
When I wanted you to find mountain strength, river motion, solar nurture,
instead you learned quaking shrew, crumbling chalk, frozen moonlight.
Where could you find playful otter, devoted bear, wise raven?
How could one so broken as I show you grace and kindness, a whole and healthful heart?
O sweet and tender child, I pray you have more mercy for me
than I for my own unlovely teachers.

Bronchus fractal by Kevin Dooley

III. 
You were a warm and solid armful, 
lips smacking at my breast
tiny fingers grabbing, holding.
How can a heart suddenly hold so much more without bursting?
It’s the physics of the thing.
Surely a heart cannot survive this pressure–
	the sinews must stretch and snap
	the arteries must thin, thin, gone
–my own heart’s blood draining, drained, useless.
What is the area under the curve of a mother’s heart?
This hot beating mass defies calculus.

	Ssh now, the lungs whisper.
Branching out into bronchi and tubes,
	a tree of paths dividing and dividing again
	asymptotically approaching the coastline of Great Britain,
	that bounded, infinite thing.
The secret algebra of love:
what cannot be measured need not be contained nor held.