Black Nights
Have you ever attempted to understand black nights?
Child, child, don’t you know that the same hoe-hoe-hoe owl that squats on your mother’s roof also perches on yours? Have you ever tried to figure out black nights? Are you so because you fancy being like that, or because you misinterpret the teaching?
How you imagine, the pressure on your breastbone in the after-hours as the pestilence that sneaks in the dark?
You may have sent for direction with the storm lamp, and never realised you were the guardian of the light.
Mom, mother, your daughter was born from your womb, but she belongs to herself. She will unravel her teachings. Your lamps burn differently. Turn the light up and down on behalf the other, hate climb under the door and extinguish both fires.
Watch out, mother. Keep the key in your smock bag, but give your daughter a duplicate. Just now you don’t hear the hate-witch at the garden gate that puts her iron pot full of aloe latex on your stove.
Daughters, mothers do not fear the journey to the river. It’s far, but it’s close. It’s all hurtful, yet also honeyed. And it’s a journey you’ll never regret.
