Max Reif’s most recent poem to appear here was “Paradox” (February 2018).

Light Mother, Dark Mother
By Max Reif

O Light Mother, out of your body I came! Your insides were my home! How can I not revere you?
O Dark Mother—how was I to know you would devour your spawn?

Light Mother, you appeared again in my helplessness and carried me until salvation was possible.
Dark Mother, you forbade me to tell my secrets and they festered inside me.

Light Mother, you turned yourself into a candle radiating gentle light and protection.
Dark Mother, you were a yawning abyss hiding razor teeth.

Light Mother, the sweetness of your voice one day in my childhood sprouted into a shade tree that helped me survive youth.
Dark Mother, what cruel being bore and raised you? What bondage you too had to endure!

Light Mother, finally the storms were over and together all we could do was try to forget.
Dark Mother, the forces of life and creation triumph over destruction and death—so life has taught me!

Light Mother, how could I know, in my sunny first days, that you would morph into or be possessed by your opposite?
Dark Mother, if life after the first birth is destroyed, I am living proof that radical Innocence can yet be born again!

Oh Light and Dark Mothers: together you made my years the stuff of myth!
New life brought Deiverance, and I was prevented from insulting life with triviality,