Dark Mother
Dark Mother
I am one part antlers on a wall
and two parts dreaming. I am unmoored
and loosed upon the lake. The melon
baller scoops out my thoughts
and scatters them like blowing snow.
My mother used to say that all
memories were ghosts, that we were
haunted by some incapacity to forget.
I am two parts bottomlands
and three parts green muck clinging
to a pond’s shore. My mother
liked to watch for warnings:
bird shadows passing through
her body, snake skins clinging
to a wire fence, the white bellies
of fish floating. And she said
that the owl of life had lifted us
in its talons and was carrying us wherever
it wanted. And she said that I had
grown inside her body so had once been
her body, just as she had once been
the body of her own mother,
and we had both fed like cannibals
before climbing out into a world
and hoarding that stolen flesh
inside our own.
Doug Ramspeck
Doug Ramspeck is the author of ten poetry collections, two collections of stories, and a novella.