Lifting the Veil

This Sunday, this Mother’s Day,
at my dear Grandmother Mountain’s side,
She is enshrouded in fog and rain.
She shows me her veiled Self.
How grateful am I, how sure of Her being.
Her vastness there
is complete in my knowing,
an unseen force of pure energy,
strong and palpable.
Over the Sacred Mound, a white veil.
I stare, aware of Her power,
and She appears!  just briefly, just half,
by my precious son’s bones,
by the tree made of me.
Pan, dark and strong,
nods playfully among the rhododendrons.
At the lake, the white veil,
the delicate, steady patter of raindrops
on the lake’s surface and on my roof.
So this is how one lifts the veil!
This knowing, this many years of deeply relating,
these many stories:
the star magnolia magnificently drooping,
the hammock strung, the midnight swim,
the beaver dam,
the wild strawberries.
I know, I’m sure, I feel
I can lift the veil.

Annelinde Metzner
Grandmother Mountain
May 13, 2012