Mother of the Big Stone

MOTHER OF THE BIG STONE

This is the time when she
saw me beneath the bully,
her son, her fleshy blood
under attack. I watched her
approach slowly, deliberately,
she was coming to avenge me,
the violence of fear that I endured
all school year long, she carried
the strength of motherhood
down through time to that
moment, every angry animal
was within her, every wild blood-
filled heart of the mother defending
her young, claws bared, fangs, hairs
bristling.

He didn't see that. He saw a woman
and he learned from his father
that women get hit, children get hit,
he learned how hurting people provides
the illusion of control, so he played
at hurting me, at being the abusive
father he'd become, and didn't see
any of that gathered in my mother's
long slow walk toward us.

Then her hand flew out of her robe
pocket, carrying the big stone, and her
legs kicked out, and she became the
fang and the claw all at once, and he
began to run but she threw the stone
and it hung in the air like smoke, like a
firework, and he ran right under it,
and it hit his back, and he knew then
the powerful forces that he was playing with.


Richard Smyth

Posted over on Anabiosis Press