I don’t usually explain my poems.

Fewer words, no explanation necessary. These are aspects of poetry I appreciate.

Yet it feels as though a few more choice sentences want to follow The Absurdly Beautiful Appointment– a post from a few days ago, inspired by the experience of motherhood.

We all came from Her. Some of us will one day be (or currently are) Her. Each journey unique with common threads.

Myself, I steep daily in the essence of this vast maternal task. Living, wondering, resisting and embracing all of it.

If my poem expressed that mothers are “filled with an endeavor that cannot be given real words,” I’m not sure what I’m doing here in Addendumland trying to further elucidate the unspeakable.

Maybe, you the reader, already got all of this:

That impregnable darkness. It surrounded me when I called upon the saints to assist in delivering my son. Neither atheism nor enlightenment was born of that abyss. Though I was granted a healthy baby, fresh into my arms, my heart filled with hopeful questions.

There is the new mother I know. Set upon a lonely path of living with the father that doesn’t want to be one. Bestowed upon them, a seven pound bundle of purity embodied. A soul housed in a home of shadows and anger. She rests by her mother’s heart, beating with both the greatest joy and deepest disappointment.

And there is every mother’s fear. One that sentences can only stumble through. The heart-searing loss of a child. Hers was only three years old. Death’s blanket hung upon her, though Life insisted she keep breathing. She walked with pain so deep and tender, it hurt to have another touch her skin.

You see, some of these are the mother stories never told.

Though there is beauty, too.

The vulnerable glistening of low tide waters on a mother seal and her baby, resting in morning sun. Their bodies gently rocking in the softest ocean waves.

Or the night when I am witness to the wonder. Firelight in darkness. My boy jumping with his dreams under the stars, whispering wishes near my face with sweet abandon. He wants me to live forever.

And I love this love. And I know I’ll die (this seven-year old does, too, in his own way). I can only embrace the beauty of the moment, bittersweet with understanding that all things change.

Shafts of light dance rainbow prisms in the same room where darkened corners house unknown treacheries. This is the heart of a mother.

You may see her busy about town, though she is often quiet about what it is she’s holding in her chest. Because, of course, how could words describe it? And when would the time be right to tell you?

She’s herding children, running errands, checking off her list. Making sure she meets her appointment.