my mother has escaped love

my mother has escaped love.
which is to say,
she and my father turn
60 years old in june
as a married couple,
so she understands
that love is no mere enthusiasm;

no chased thing,
 no source of youth,
  no misting degrees of want,
   no harbor pursued,
  no turned-up sun,
 no significant fortune,
no public poetry.

we've all blasted it to
pieces, made it sentimental.
it's in the courts of our
poisoned blood; we are all
feverish with its currency
and have mistaken it for something
like fashion or violence.

love is the ancient find
in the ancient ground,
the sacred air in the tombs
of the kings, the particles
in the air above spring fields,
the twilight rays found
in the shortest good-byes.

she dwells in the beloved, my mother,
my inexhaustible water,
who can't spell to save
her own life, and whose
passions flank us all and
who grew up in the best  times
when life was on an oiled hinge.

i liken her to no flower,
 no obscure scent,
  no palpable constellation,
  no ageless dream,
 no prenatal obscurity,
no heavenly relic.

rather, she is let it go
she is may it be
she is what it ought be
she is never do say
she is always breathe
she is kiss ever fully
she is dance with time.

my mother liked to bite,
did i ever tell you that?
at random moments
she would bare her teeth
and sink them into the flesh
of my shoulder or arm
enough for me to know i was hers,

the way the lioness bites
the neck of her unruly cubs,
a playful marking, a
lucid reminder that she
is the empress, the hungry
master of the wild world.

most mothers i know are like
this; and my mother is no less
sweet than delirious angels,
yet a rogue killer of the
joyless secrets shared between
heaven and man; she is my
delicate escort.

she has irreplaceable loyalty, my mother.
she is a reader of spy novels and
taught me the great chambers found in
the written word that led me
to put to page the finery
of inexact thought and heroic fantasy;
she suffered through the private readings
of my hand-written, jerky dream-lands.

she is the beacon,
the lady chancellor,
the high priestess,
the guardian against and
the foil to my enemies;
she is the longest day
and shortest night.

my mother has escaped love,
which is to say she
and i stand on separate soil,
diverged by a thin
and constant bridge of surety.
my reachable pilot,
my dearest source.