Visions Of My Mother & Beyond Poem by S. R. Lavin

The wind sweeping the land, of human history
and hope born of hope: this being as close as I can get
to Heaven, where stream and valley connect
and I feel that I belong here, that the meaning of life
is not beyond us but in us, a living God who weeps
when I weep and suffers when I suffer.

I dream of my mother. It is Spring.
She is standing on the street corner
by the laundramat, she is twenty years old.
She is happy. She has not lost a child.
She smiles because she is glad to see me.

Years later. It is my mother’s birthday.
Her face is swollen. She stands over my father,
ressurrected from loneliness. She is an old woman.

I am alone in my bed: the sun streaks across the meadow
into my window and wakes me. I am awake and
I am remembering the dream. My mother
puts her hand on my arm and squeezes
with loving tenderness. I feel her touch.
I remember she is only the dream I am having.

I am unable to explain or rationalize
the sequence of the dream: I wake up,
then I feel her touch.

What can I say? Beyond what I think or know,
and beyond what anyone thinks or thinks they know,
there is a world where those who love
show their love and are not dead.

In the world of the living those who love do not die,
and those who do not love are dead though they live.