Three Poems by Barbara Leonhard

 

MOTHER’S LIGHT GUIDES ME TO HER

I.

To her wound. I descend

into her balefire. Birth scraps

a scar on my neck.

I cleave to her, suckle loss.

As soon as I am born,

I start saying goodbye.

Nothing lasts. Except scars.

Love makes me her namesake,

her likeness in miniature,

her wound’s creation. My parents’

elixir. They raise their grail.

II.

When a baby’s born,

all mothers sigh in unison,

a butterfly effect,

rippling into all mothers’ souls

then to the planets and stars,

searching for names.

My grandmothers and great grandmothers

were generous with births.

Most had 6 or 7.

There were tragedies.

The two baby sisters Mom lost,

creating a hole in Grandmother Lilian’s soul

that mother could not fill.

The wound of the mother

becomes the wound of the daughter.

My mother felt abandoned

by her mother, just as her mother

felt abandoned by her baby daughters.

III.

Grief is a shared malady.

It drains the pond.

No amount of tears

can repair the hemorrhage.

Healing is not always glorious.

Though light guides and softens pain,

it can singe as a wildfire.

Creation of life and love

is as chaotic as star birth.

BEARING THE WORLD

Your equator is full.

I hold your globe and press my ear

against your skin to hear

the heartbeat of another new sun,

its glow flickering,

a mysterious creation

held in warm waters.

Soft waves lap to the tiny heartbeat.

Your water breaks and floods the home

with babies, diapers, pacifiers, toys.

I learn to swim to rescue you

from drowning

and think someday I too will

bear the world

and pack my chest of hopes

with bibs, blankies, bottles.

My dreams leave no sound as they settle

into shadows.

My ghosts, swaddled

in umbra.

ODE TO THE EMBRYO THAT MY T-SHAPED UTERUS MISCARRIED

You left my broken womb

as the bloody remains of what

was never to come. I still feel you

in the waves, the flow

of my sacral river - your tears?

Your fears I’ve abandoned you?

No, Honey. No! I’ll never forget you.

The t-shaped womb

couldn’t hold your brilliance.

Your tiny, beautiful self,

washed away. Your light

sparkles in each of my cells.

My core, your forever home.

Your essence, my creative labour

in verse and art.

Everyone says, “Forget the dead.”

I can’t leave my baby

screaming in her forever crib.

Or my young miss alone

in harm’s way on grief’s edge.

Though never delivered

into my arms, you shelter

in my wound of wanting. Each night,

I press my scar against a pillow

to swaddle you in your mother’s heat.

In dreams, we share the sacred skiff,

and together, wind up and up

out of the wake

of the wound

into a newborn sky.

Barbara Leonhard is the author of the best-selling Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir (EIF, 2022) and co-author with Nolcha Fox of Too Much Fun To Be Legal (Garden of Neuro, 2024). Both books are available on Amazon. Barbara has received nominations for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is the Editor of MasticadoresUSA. You can follow her on her Wordpress blog: Extraordinary Sunshine Weaver.

Prepared by Angela Kosta Executive Director of MIRIADE Magazine, Academic, journalist, writer, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, translator, promoter.