Ruth C. Chad

 

A Mother’s Journey

I

I am the shoot that sips
from shallow roots

I slake my thirst
from wet clay and river bed

needing just a flash of sunlight,
photosynthesis complete—

like a reed I grow tall,
grope and grasp
wave and bend.

II

In the way of the silkworm
I weave silken thread
the warp and weft
morning and night
substance from inchoate being.

III

I live like the snail
in a shining shell,
evolve in a spiral

each glimmering line
linking bone to tendon,
action to response—

grasping with muscular foot
my slender lungs
reach for air…

I give what I find
nurture what needs me—

I carry in my whorled shell
nub of heart
embryonic soul.

 

Longing

 

hangs in the air like an echo
palpable only
by its visceral insistence—

we know longing
by its absence of fulfillment…

when we were young,
we lay on velvet grass
folding in upon each other,
stillness almost complete—

our touch was tender
as the paper-white wings
of a moth, opening
closing,  pulsating together

known by what is left
after wings shift air
slightly shaking the
long stems of yarrow.

 

Previously published by Ibbetson Street

 

 

 

 

 

Ruth Chad is a psychologist who works in the Boston area.  Her poems have appeared in Montreal Poems, Lyrical Somerville, Ibbetson Street, the Bagel Bard Anthology, the Aurorean, Constellations and The Psychodynamic Couple and Family Institute of New England, Connection, and Soul-Lit. Her chapbook, The Sound of Angels, was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2017.