Ode To My Mother

My mother nursed me sitting atop the commanding red cliffs
that towered over the gentle waters of Oak Creek.
As a young man I would leap from those
same cliffs into the deep cool water of the earth,
swim under the water and look up to the sun and see the rays dance across the water and penetrate deep into the body of water
engulfing my senses with a certainty of life, a love for the living. I would run to shore and scurry back up the mountain of ambition to stand atop it and leap yet again like a thought breaking free from the confines of my consciousness to sink deep into the water of your mind where I would swim through the sunlit tides of your happiness. Yes mother, you gave me this happiness, this extrusion of higher reality to soar from. The water to feel weightless in, free of burden. You gave to me the tears that escape the storm clouds of my conscious and fall from the sky of my mind, to water the seeds of deliverance. You taught me to feel the wind on my face and the rain on my brow. Wind that you taught me to whisper words of love into that float across the world and land into another child's ear to soothe. To cast handfuls of seeds into so that they carry and fall into the soil of opportunity. The rain that you taught me to be grateful for when saw it as a lost opportunity to play in the earth that you taught me to walk gently on so I don't hurt the same seeds that fell from the grasp of the wind into the garden of appreciation.

You gave me the aroma of perspective, by lighting the sweet incense of purpose, of love, the essence of passion, the aspiration fire that burns in my soul. You taught me to kneel when I found it to hard to stand. You taught me to love when my heart was broken. You taught me to be real when I was naive ? to realize that very few people on the planet are trying to be better people each day. Clouds of apathy hang low and dark as I look up at them wondering why it never rains. Like the clouds, the people never gave anything of themselves. You taught me to have hope, that the flowers of my virtue paint the desert of my mind.

You taught me that artistry is the capacity of the mind to dance to our thoughts with the music of our heart. You taught me that being noble is not hereditary, or dependent upon class. It is based upon your honor and the pureness of your heart. In the true sense of the word, there are few noble men among the lofty ranks of nobility.

You asked me once: How much of my happiness do I base upon the smile of another, the touch of another, the love of another? The emptiness inside of me that is filled with adoration, like water poured into an empty glass and handed to me to quench my thirst?

You told me once: If time were perceivable on the eternal level, we would not function in the agony of the now, but the bliss of the moment. You gave to me life and I am eternally thankful. You taught me that it is in the autumn of my soul that the thoughts and aspirations of my mind fall like leaves from an old tree. It is only when I am naked and cold that God will bring the awesome spring... Rebirth.