Ecstatic Mother          

by Rita Moe


She wore fifteen gold chains. 
She wore fringe on all her fingers. 
She ate only after sundown.
She smoked the fine thin wings of dragonflies.
She helped, from the standpoint of history.
She traveled by water.
She drank nectar to excess.
She kept bloodroot and cosmos and horses in her garden.
She told stories when the moon was full.
She sang. All winter she sang. 
She fought to keep her children.
She danced to keep her lovers.
She never missed the sunrise.
She kept her secrets on the walls of caves.
She wept, ran, never needed to tell why.


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Rita Moe is a poet, knitter, & gardener. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Sins & Disciplines and Findley Place; A Street, a Ballpark, a Neighborhood. Now retired from a Minneapolis investment firm, she is the mother of two grown sons and lives with her husband in Roseville, MN.