The Blasphemers Mother: Shulamit Bat Divri

for all mothers mourning their children

in honor of women’s right to choose

 

I was named

for the dream of peace

daughter of the yet

unbroken word 

and became a mother 

who’s body was 

a place of war.

 

A poisoned river

flowed from me

into my saturated son

stoned before my eyes

as if this was justice

was of use to anyone.

 

My mother was unnamed

but I know her as you might

as the warmth that incubated

each of us   a once vulnerable

egg within the egg

protected and then 

cracked open.

 

I am the hollowing wind

turning the earth cold

and barren in my grief.

I am the torn cloth of the tallit -

a sail bent and uplifted by storms.

I am the eye, the peace 

at the center of every hurricane.

I am the mother

of what happens when

the wound mixes with presence,

a watered seed in just enough light

in the emptied, filling soil.