Original poetry by Lisa Kantor

“If I Was Your Mama”

“If I Was Your Mama”

If I was your mama 
I’d want to hold you just right, 
feeling my way into
how it is to be you.

If I was your mama 
I’d loan your soul my eyes, 
I’d mirror every moment you looked for me 
Seeing the best bits of you,
The miracle of your truth,
even when you feel at your worst

If I was your mama 
I’d expect good behavior, 
respect

If I was your mama 
I’d want to be in the complicated stuff with you, 
the unsolvable,
the unthinkable,
The un-feel-able whole stew of it.

If I was your mama 
I’d have space and time for you 
even when my heart was heavy, 
my mind was busy, 
and my body ached.

If I was your mama 
I’d tell it like it is: 
life ain’t easy, not gonna pretend,  
so just find good friends to take the ride with and
be real,
no bullshit, 
no faking it, 
no pretending to be somebody 
Just because you think that’s what 
somebody else is going to love. 

Ride out the hard stuff with a small boat full of humans just like you, 
complicated, messy and real 
with huge hearts, deep souls, wise minds
and generous eyes.

If I was your mama
I’d tell you:
The antidote to your woes?
just get in the boat and row
with others who know the ocean runs deep, deep,
way below what fishermen fish,
beyond what painters can know.  

My child,
there is no line that defines your world, 
no above and below, 
Just a whole cosmic show 
that will come and will go
with each dare you take.
My love, stay awake!  

If I was your mama 
I really, really wouldn’t want to be mortal…
I’d want to live out the whole of your life.

But if I was your mama 
It would only be for a time. 
Then tag, you’re “It”!
We are all it. 
We are the mamas 
Who hold souls, 
so don’t be sold out, don’t sidestep it. 
Be it.

I am your Mama. 
I am your Mama.

---

“A New Beginning”

---

“You Don’t Want to Know This”

You don’t want to know this. 
if you did, it would change everything

Trust me, you’re not ready. 
If you were you would’ve been on that path,
down that road, an unstoppable force 
heading north, to the core, 
to the heart of it all. 
You’re just not ready 
to know what you already know. 
So stay where you are, that’s the best place for
you. At least for now, just stay put.

When you are ready, 
you can come to me, if you’d like. 
I’ve gone there, 
and now I’m stuck 
like a lobster in a trap. No way to back out

Admission: it’s not all that bad…
in fact, it’s mesmerizingly, painfully 
and rapturously beautiful. 

So much so 
it brings tears from my thighs to my eyes, 
a burning fire inside 
singeing my throat.

And I simply bear this beauty alone. 

Unwarned, I, too, wasn’t ready,
Hadn’t known… 
But I’m already there.

You aren’t ready.
Please, I beg you to stay put
 if you cherish all that you already know 
just as it is. 
Just as you’d want it to be. 
Even with the disappointments, the griefs,
The frustrations you can’t name. 
It’s the home you know.
Don’t leave your front door. It only swings out.

But when you are ready come find me, 
you shouldn’t be alone.

Oh yes, and bring your book of Rumi Poems.
They help, 
they know what you know 
and don’t want to know yet. 
But bring them when you’re ready, 
I will be here waiting, 
alone and at home 
in the lovely agony of the now known.

---

“Sunrise”

I sit with my
Morning Coffee,

Awake.
Sleep ran from me
Each time I chased her –
I witness the hint of
Gold-orange
Light
Rising, pushing itself along the contours
Of roofs and yards.

And In a single moment
I recognize the absolute
Inversion
I’ve been taught to see:
The Rising Sun.
As though I am simply still,
An audience member,
Awaiting
The rise of the curtain,
Revealing this spectacular daily unfolding
for my own pleasure,
Critique, display.

Now I see it is not
Sun-rise,
after all,
But rather
Earth-fall
As we turn again and descend into
Her waiting arms, surrendering to this
New day.

---

“My Mother’s Fear: In Memoriam”

In the time since her passing,
her death,
the end of her known life

I’ve wondered:
where has my mother’s fear
gone?

As the first of her daughters,
I had dutifully tried
always
to walk by her side,
to match,
then slow her stride,
as she listed this way
and that.

Together, we had borne
her well-worn worries,
her restless, misbehaving offspring.

Each of her colicky progeny
sleepless,
as if determined to
reach for every flash of light,
Each new flavor, each concern –
Unable to savor even a moment’s peace.

We swaddled and aimed to tame her woes,
not quite foes,
more like
infants she hadn’t meant to bear,
who now belonged to her,
to us,
entrusted to our care.

Day after agonizing day,
I, too, became mother to her brood –
A loving gesture
An indentured offering –
so that she
would not bear such an unruly load
alone.

But… where?

With the expiration of her determined body,
where
have they now gone,
those tethered pounds,
like boulders she’d unwittingly
brought home?

Our dear and difficult companions,
Once shared, now
vanished
with the end of her long, fertile life.

Today

In the slowly settling wake of
Memorials –

The funeral,
The shiva,
The flowers,
The final fate of her buried estate –

I am stunned

to find myself

moving
so smoothly
into the enormous room left behind.

Absent this family of fears,

Perhaps failing my lifelong duty,
perhaps not quite,

the steps I take today feel brighter.

I
almost prance with delight,
absorbing aromas,
alighting on poems,
open at last to love’s extraordinary daily displays.

Whisked away with her mortal body,
I could not have known
how
the departure of her woes
would give birth
and release
to my soul.

---

“An African Safari”

The khaki clad tourist –
Look at you! Adorned in safari hues –
I disembark, equipped to blend, bend, stretch

In the heart of the Serengeti
in Tanzania
across the world

A place I’d paid to travel to,
a people I went to learn from,
a time borrowed from my known life,
to see what there might be.

I watch through binoculars and wide, open eyes,
stepping too quickly, trying again
more lightly…
slowly, slowly – polé, polé –
I was told.

Taste Africa, white woman from afar,
Sip her,
Savor her,
Bow to her,
Let her save you, slowly, slowly…

She seems, yes,
an unfamiliar body.

Here, here arms lay strong and wise beside her.

Here, her hair falls in coils and waves,
a lush canopy,
a shaded offering for you.

Here, her hills and plains stand complete,
nothing more remains to see or say beyond this,

simply this.

And as for me?
I believed that discover lay ahead:
I’d gone to see, to smell, to taste anew.

But She?
She remembered me,
she greeted me with ancient love,
her strong, slow embrace, she welcomed me back
Home.

And now I leave knowing,
Oh, this true knowing
That her body is my body,

The lobes of her ears bringing sound inside,
The strength of her legs, her varied, lovely stride,
The aching simplicity of this land, all this held in her
beckoning hands.

Millions of years before,
I had been the child she bore. Yet I’d forgotten I was
Hers
As I stood naively waving from a separate shore.

Africa,
Oh Africa,
You have claimed me: I am orphaned no more.

---

“Where We Linger”

In this liminal moment
as the tapestry fades and frays
in ways subtle
and time-worn,
when the good heart
and the beloved eyes
begin
to linger on the remnants of
what once was,

humility slips in through the back door.

After all,
what had we thought?
That time would spare us
Loss?
That our story would be
somehow different?
That the frame we’d chosen
For display
would hold the colors immortal,
in all their vibrant rich hues?

And now
With this new sensory greeting
the new
knowing,
we see again
how it is,
of course.

And now
we know:
how it had been before
was simply –
then.

And now
we linger
hope to romance,
to capture
the new pigments,
the loveliness and despair
of this fragment
of a life.

---

“After Her Passing” — A Trilogy

1. “Receiving Line”

Standing in black,
a ribbon torn at my chest
denoting
an irreparable tear in the fabric of my life
and you approach,
solemnly,

As I receive
your severed relationship
your heartbreak
the remnants of your love,
now seeking it’s former home in vain.

And I receive the stories
now held only in one-sided memory
of inside jokes and vodka tonics that
punctuated your private moments, your cherished relationships.

Now I receive
a whole new grief,
Like bits of clothing left at the playground, mid play, frozen,

a pile of lost love and longing and laughing
poured at my feet, homeless and searching and crying,
and I hold this for you all as a treasure,
so damn heavy on a chest already straining to breathe.

I receive you,
mourners of my mother,
and add your pain to my own,
Add your memories to my stash of orphaned memories.
comfort eludes us all
but inside this mess
I will
stand
tall in my grief, receiving.

2. “Grieving”

As Shiva ends,

I am waiting.
I am floating,
I am crying.
I am numb.
I am crossing things off the list.

Is this grieving?

I am dreaming,
I am clenching my teeth as I try to sleep,
I am sleeping as if drugged,
I am napping.
I cannot sleep.

Is this grieving?

I am connecting deeply with an empathic friend.
I am avoiding social contact.
I crave silence.
I am overeating.
I have no appetite.

Is this grieving?

I am lost.
I am clear.
I am confused.
I am grounded.
I am hopeful.

Is this grieving?

I cannot remember her.
I picture every one of her last moments when I least want to.
I cannot bear how her life ended.
I am grateful her struggle is over.

Is this grieving?

This is my grieving.

For now,
This is my grieving.

3. “In Lieu of Flowers”

In lieu of flowers…
Please –
Get out of your own way.
Clear the fog from your window
and see
Once and for all
how extraneous so many of your worries are.

In lieu of flowers,
clear out the junk in your life
that steals hours and minutes
each day,
leaving you bloated and longing
for nourishment

In lieu of flowers,
do what I couldn’t,
pick up where I left off,
take your next courageous steps!

In lieu of flowers,
hold me in memory kindly,
for I may have failed you.
Remember how hard
this human condition is for us all,
and be wise and fair.

In lieu of flowers
notice them as they bloom,
even
as you sneeze from the pollen,
as you wince from a particular aroma,
still, marvel at the loveliness of their petals.

In lieu of flowers
you know exactly what to do:
Live boldly,
discard the unnecessary fears
(keep the important ones, of course),
and live as your own
honest,
harmonic,
enormous,

brilliant painting.
Brush yourself generously
across the canvas
and take the risk to see what you leave behind.

In lieu of flowers,
please
Live
the way life can be:
full of you.
share yourself,
open your wings to song
and dance
and bring your unique flavor to those still around
to enjoy you.

In the end,
in lieu of flowers
simply
Be the bouquet you’d wished to send.