In The Eyes Of My Mother And Grandmother Poem by Patti Masterman

In the eyes of my mother and grandmother
There lived a limpid green coolness:
Moss covered stones, around an ancient well;
Trailing vines entangled about the cenote's mouth;
Scrawled incantations on antique wooden chests
Their treasures concealed in endless green canyons of agate.

At day's end, the same gleaming, green elixir;
I could float on it's pale peridot waves
Or fully immerse myself there, in fright's flight or languor's ease,
Could submerge myself as the beloved, of those intelligent green rays
Ever visible, through the leafy canopy of daily living,
An emerald sky always smiling down from above.

After I saw their green lamps slowly grow dim;
Then extinguish themselves, I could no longer hide myself there:
Their embracing foliage retreated, withdrew
From where the last light had left, as if it had moved too far
To be visible from where it had always shone, before;
Only to save myself then, I ran whimpering away:
It was the only time I found no sanctuary there.

But sometimes now, searching again
I can find buried tendrils of a once fresh, softened green fury
Which grew tumultuous, only in defense of me;
Or that vivid hope, of a proud jade that once poured out
Molten, to harden around childhood's fragility.

And like a guarding amulet of rare green amber, enclosed my world
Kept it safe of lurking monsters, disguised dangers
Guarded the waking hours, or else enfolded them
In their green curtained gazebo of sleep,
As tender mimosa dreams floated past fragrant fields of clover.

I nightly and invisibly grew taller and stronger
With my own clusters of foliage, budding fruit,
Just waiting for the sun to finally breathe itself
Into the tiny green illuminated flecks, that now swim forever
Only inside my own small lichen pools of dreaming earth.