waterwomen, earthwomen, mothers, dreams & journeys

[storyrainthejournal]

Here is my mom, April of last year, with me, my sister, niece, and step-dad.



My mom has always been more the waterwoman mother (also known as the dragonfly mother) than the earthwoman* mother. I've had abandonment issues, as it were, since six. But I love her very much, and I'm very glad she's in my life now. And really, would I be the me, and the writer I am, without her? No.

*from the poem by Denise Levertov, included under the cut

The Earthwoman and the Waterwoman

The earthwoman by her oven
tends her cakes of good grain.
The waterwoman’s children
are spindle thin.
The earthwoman
has oaktree arms. Her children
full of blood and milk
stamp through the woods shouting.
The waterwoman
sings gay songs in a sad voice
with her moonshine children.
When the earthwoman
has had her fill of the good day
she curls to sleep in her warm hut
a dark fruitcake sleep
but the waterwoman
goes dancing in the misty lit-up town
in dragonfly dresses and blue shoes.



and an excerpt from The Dragonfly-Mother

Who is the Dragonfly-Mother?
What does she do?

She is the one who hovers on stairways of air,
sometimes almost grazing your cheekbone,
she is the one who darts unforeseeably into unexpected dimensions,

...I remember the cold Waterwoman,
in dragonfly dresses
and blue shoes, long ago.
She is the same,

whose children were thin,
left at home while she went out dancing.

She is the Dragonfly-Mother,
that cold is only
the rush of air swiftness brings.

There is a summer over the water, over
the river mirrors
where she hovers,
a summer fertile, abundant, where dreams grow into acts and journeys.

Her children are swimmers, nymphs and newts, metamorphic.
When she tells her stories,
she listens; when she listens
she tells you the story you utter.