A Flood Poem

The Flood Flows Around My Mother's House

It wasn't winter
when you saw the flood
your first flood
the firemen tore apart the tracks
the rails left in segments
while glass green water pools around them
I watch/we watch and carry down
we watch the people watch the water
rising
between the houses a great roil
a crystal mass pushes toward us
placid we watch
I feel your presence, is this your memory?
or mine?
are you resting after your long travail?
did you fight your way to peace?
this was a day after your birthday
christmas 1939
I miss you
but why send me this memory?
did you remember me? do you recall
the life you had as a priestess?
or the life of a country witch
hidden behind your mask?
what moved you to the silent battles
you fought
only to have to rest again?
your spirit spirals through the house
up and up the ceiling expands to enfold you
the water laps on my feet, my shins
rising.


I recently read a nice post on Robert Moss's blog on floods and dreams and poetry and it connected for me with a mysterious dream I had about my mother. I posted a comment on the topic and later felt that my descriptive dream journal entry deserved something better. Something that captured the feeling and mood of that dream, which was probably the point of the dream, as I understand it. I've worked this dream on and off for a year in a group and alone and I've felt that it was a sending from my departed mother. I think that this poem is the closest I've come to capturing the feeling of the dream. I haven't tried writing a poem for a few many years, but I feel like this isn't a bad result for all that.