Posts by Mitch

The Book I Wanted to Buy For My Mother

For many years I wanted to buy a book for my mother — a book that would explain everything: what I hadn’t or couldn’t explain since I had been old enough to notice my mother wasn’t all that happy and, Lord knows, I wanted my mother to be happy and if not “happy” per se, then at least aware of what it was that made me, her son, happy — the “thing” that for so many years she thought was a phase I was going through and, even worse, some kind of heartless rejection of her and her way of life.

Yes, I wanted to buy my mother a book that would explain it all — the whole “New Age thing,” the whole “Guru thing,” the whole “it’s OK that I don’t eat your veal parmigiana any more because I’m a vegetarian thing.” Somebody must have written it. Somebody must have noticed the market niche of “mothers over 60 who worry why their high performing sons have gone “spiritual”.

And so, I went looking for this book. Like some people look for God. And though I never found it, I did find some reasonable facsimiles. Cleverly titled books displayed by the check out counter, conceived by marketing geniuses who somehow knew my need — the need a son has to make his mother smile and nod her head approvingly. The book that would keep my mother company during those long nights when her husband was working late and her children were asleep and there was nothing good on TV. The ultimate self-help book that would remove her worries, her doubts, and her exponentially growing fears of thinking her son had gone off the deep end for “receiving Knowledge” from that young boy from India.

This Thirst

There is an aching deep within my heart

why dogs pace back and forth before a door
as their master turns for home.

Ah, this restlessness, this thirst, this ache,
this silent undertow inside
that takes me back to the hidden spring
where lions come to drink,
and snakes,
why birds sing when they are all alone
and the long ride home on an empty train
often feels like an arrival.

The Falcon and the Falconer

I am the falcon,
you are the falconer.
Always I am coming back to you,
my soaring skyward just a strategy
to gather speed for my ultimate return.
How you have trained me is a mystery —
the way you’ve tamed my restless heart.
It is not with fear. I do not fear you.
It is not with food.

There is prey enough for me everywhere I fly.
It is more the way you offer me your arm,
a place to land, a second skin,
scented with the wild musk of one who waits for me,
what I would be if I would be a man.

It is a wonderful game the two of us play —
this coming and going,
this circular ballet.
Each time you loose the loops around my legs
and signal me to fly, I remember
what it is to rise for the first time.

It is here I find my rest, my home.
Untethered, still I do not move,
needing only to be close to you, my Falconer.
It is this that beats my wings, releases me to sky,
rides the unseen currents of the air
and though I notice other things:
the tops of trees, a cloud, a nimble rabbit on the ground,
all I see is you, holding out your arm to me,
even as a thousand other falcons overhead,
each within your view,
circle closer, spiral down, descend,
yet still I know that I am next
and this
is the perfect moment
of my return.