As a Mother Comforts

I woke up in the forest
and there she was asleep in your lap,
pine resin warming the air.

The bark of every tree defined the moment
as the texture of all that falls to sleep
in the sun.

The stream did not speak of the trials
that were to come.

The light had nothing to say about
how children can be in your lap
under the trees one moment and
in many other places
traveling for the light they have lost
the next.

We can remember as if there.

It is good to feel yourself a child
in the bosom of your mother, held.

It is good to remember the arms around
and the lap that comforts.

It is good to hear the melodies that
sing over your head into sleep.

God is the Mother of our past.
God is the Mother of our future.
And here God is, in all that aches under the sun,
And here we are, at rest.

Jenneth Graser

"As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted..." Isaiah 66:13

Mother Holding Child, Platinum print, circa 1915 [Photo from the Rodger Kingston Collection]