The Mystified Ballad of Mama Maureen (In Three Quarter Time)
She stands with watchful eyes on the life around her
Elbow deep in her to-do list, but keeping her focus everywhere.
The child, sick or wounded or sad or worried,
Needing attention and care.
The Boss with one hand on the purse-strings and the other up her skirt
As she smiles through tears, pulling the shreds of her dignity
Around shoulders once regal and young and beautiful and bare.
She comes with hands full of ointment,
The sweet smell of reassurance surrounding her like a cloud,
And massages the wounded ego, the bruised pride,
The discouraged hearts of men,
To leave them, rested and comforted,
As she climbs, exhausted, once again into her empty bed.
Her life is full of shadow men.
Men who are dead.
Men who are in prison.
Men who are Not Here.
Men who lie in the arms of other women and find their comfortable and law-abiding solace there
While she is left with scraps and fragments,
Sorting and placing them like puzzle pieces on the sheets as she sits crosslegged on the bed
And watches other lives
Other choices
Other opportunities
Murders and self help books and kitchen gadgets
On TV.
Her broken heart is full of love that speaks an alien tongue
And cannot reach even those who own it,
And so it sits,
Useless,
Like potato peelings in the kitchen drain.
She cannot remember her magick,
Even when she knows it still lives in her somewhere.
Perhaps in some forgotten closet, where she keeps the rest of her girlish, outgrown things.
And every day is a waking ache of things to do
and demands to be met
and impossibilities to be made real.
And she wonders when she lost the magick to make it all so...
Then remembers...
That she left it in a jar, in a niche, in a wood.
It is in that jar, amongst the powdered ash and bone,
That the best of herself sleeps
Against the Day of Resurrection,
And awaits the trump,
And yearns toward Judgment.
She waits, with straining ears, for Gabriel.
And in the meantime, there are dishes and dog hair,
Laundry and love songs,
Good days and bad.
And she knows that this is the True Path
And rest is just a little further down the road.
Elbow deep in her to-do list, but keeping her focus everywhere.
The child, sick or wounded or sad or worried,
Needing attention and care.
The Boss with one hand on the purse-strings and the other up her skirt
As she smiles through tears, pulling the shreds of her dignity
Around shoulders once regal and young and beautiful and bare.
She comes with hands full of ointment,
The sweet smell of reassurance surrounding her like a cloud,
And massages the wounded ego, the bruised pride,
The discouraged hearts of men,
To leave them, rested and comforted,
As she climbs, exhausted, once again into her empty bed.
Her life is full of shadow men.
Men who are dead.
Men who are in prison.
Men who are Not Here.
Men who lie in the arms of other women and find their comfortable and law-abiding solace there
While she is left with scraps and fragments,
Sorting and placing them like puzzle pieces on the sheets as she sits crosslegged on the bed
And watches other lives
Other choices
Other opportunities
Murders and self help books and kitchen gadgets
On TV.
Her broken heart is full of love that speaks an alien tongue
And cannot reach even those who own it,
And so it sits,
Useless,
Like potato peelings in the kitchen drain.
She cannot remember her magick,
Even when she knows it still lives in her somewhere.
Perhaps in some forgotten closet, where she keeps the rest of her girlish, outgrown things.
And every day is a waking ache of things to do
and demands to be met
and impossibilities to be made real.
And she wonders when she lost the magick to make it all so...
Then remembers...
That she left it in a jar, in a niche, in a wood.
It is in that jar, amongst the powdered ash and bone,
That the best of herself sleeps
Against the Day of Resurrection,
And awaits the trump,
And yearns toward Judgment.
She waits, with straining ears, for Gabriel.
And in the meantime, there are dishes and dog hair,
Laundry and love songs,
Good days and bad.
And she knows that this is the True Path
And rest is just a little further down the road.