Self and Stars
https://poems.culturing.net/2026/08/29/self-and-stars/
The mother grips her son with a love
laced with fear, holds on, and demands
in return his whole being, the total
surrender of all he would like to be. He
will never be free, so long as she answers
his deepest question, so long as she stands
in the place of hope, as a constellation
of fear and desire and need. But he can
be freed by the process of integration,
by learning with finality the lessons
she stumbled to teach, and remembering where
this hope comes from.
It was never in her.
It was in the stars,
and in himself.
But where is there room for the love of another,
if not this tainted love, but a love made to weather
all storms, instead of creating storm itself? There is room
in the heart, in the secret place, where the wounds
cannot reach, where hope springs eternal, where life
will continue to blossom under any conditions.
From here we can grow, and there is
no other soil to replenish our storehouses,
no other place wherein hope can be planted
and brought to harvest. We are the soil,
and we must take good care not to fallow
ourselves in the desperation of winter. Hope grows
if we tend it, but many are the forces
that devour the crop or sow salt in the field.
What then is revealed? Only pain, and the labor
of reducing it, the truth of our concourse here
on the earth, in the land between self and stars.
