Mater Sancti

Imagine Darkness.
Utter, tangible, swaddling Darkness.
Perhaps there was an Otherplace before (I think so); perhaps there was not.
Perhaps that darkness is salted with memories that
out-bubbled Cerridwen’s Cauldron, outswam the currents of Lethe.
But even so at best those images lost their light and
swim now in the Darkness that rushes on ears not yet formed but
listening, always listening.
And out of that Darkness, the first sound of a lifetime,
a sound not heard but felt…
Thum-thump. Thum-thump. Thum-thump.
It’s a cadence that you’ll match your deepest rhythms to,
the master metronome for the symphony that is to be a Life.
Sacred Texts have told us much about the Father, about hands that shaped clay
and into it breathed life, about a bearded mouth that smiled for It Was Good.
And blessed be the Fathers, for their gritty hands have hewn out homes
from solid rock and chiseled language on Eternity.
But slowly, surely, as trembling and determined as a foal’s first steps,
we’re remembering the Sacred Space that circles Holy Mother,
Mater Sancti.
For when we look for clay, we find it not in books but in the Earth,
and not so deep that our spades raise blisters on
hands that seek the stuff of life.
And while the sperm may offer sparks, the stem-cell clay that forms our Form
is fashioned by maternal hands.
Blessed be the mothers, for they are the Shapers of the Future.
Imagine Darkness.
Warm, inviting darkness— not the darkness of oblivion,
for that is cold and empty as Terror.
Imagine the darkness of becoming, the darkness that fills a kettle
before the water spills in to brim it.
The darkness of a cave where bears and groundhogs sleep.
The darkness of the Womb.
And in that darkness drums a drum, thum-thumping a rhythm of comfort and love, making promises whispered and sung.
In that darkness hums a Voice. A voice that explains,
from the earliest inklings of Knowing, in the sturdiest depths of Foundation, that
You. (-thump)
Are not. (thum-thump)
Alone. (thum-thump)
Before the world is round, or gravity found,
before hot is ouch or milk is yum, there is
You. Are not. Alone.
And that is Everything.
Blessed be the mothers, for they are the Hummers of the Sacred Truth.
Blessed be the mothers, for they are the Voice in the Darkness of Becoming.
Blessed be the mothers.


copyright 2004, Darren C. Reiley