Mother As Landscape (Poetry)

I so often search this nomansland for you —
seek some softness hidden at its heart,
sift through and through the grit-filled years for clues
but still you offer nothing, all lies parched —

dressed bright in smooth, wide skirts of crisp-edged sand,
teats dry and chill, indifferent to sighs —
you’re buttoned tight inside your desert world,
my footsteps covered over every time.

It’s as though you could not sense me on your skin,
as if I never crossed those distant dunes,
imagining oases where the light
hung shimmering with welcome in your arms.

Instead, black sticks of trees, long-dead and blind,
rake the sky, implore the hollow moon
to save its silver, stem the sorry waste
of pouring love on such an empty place.

So you remain untouchable, untouched,
remote as dreams unborn, desires unfed —
a shifting landscape barely on the map,
devoid of colour, all emotion bled.