Mother’s Blessing

This timeless blood was here before begat.

Infinity runs in your veins—

Not mine, nor yours,

Nor Eve’s, not Adam’s—

Gat of God,

And spinning like taffy Godwards back again.

Sapped through the centuries to us—

Grafting a limb there for the Jesse tree—

Remultiplied infinitely,

From heart to heart tick-pulsed,

Ill clad, ill fed, ill fit—

Here, child, do what you can with it.

Originally appeared in the July 1968 issue of Poetry magazine.

Copyright Credit: “Mother’s Blessing,” from Welcome Eumenides by Eleanor Ross Taylor (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1972), is reprinted with the permission of George Braziller, Inc.

Source: Poetry (February 2012)