Step Three – AA

 
For forty, fifty, years this lady drank with fierce resistance
escape or wall –  she thought it kept her Free  
and the Twelve Steps, though known, gave her no assistance –
she lacked that path or bridge to God, Step Three.  [i]
 
Her child, a living Sister, gave me a gem
which I have been turning and watching,
a diamond hard and cold
which flashes bent, and many-colored Light
 
Words this woman told her, uttered long ago
by a mother now dead, to a child now old –
the Essence of self-destruction
bent back as hatred and rebellion, at reproach,
             ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

When a small child said, “Mother, I need you,
please stop losing yourself and return to me,”
This self-destroyer lady said in classic phrase,
same as the devil spoke:
 
“I will do exactly as I wish to do.
and I will continue to do so
as long as I wish to.”
How pure, how clear! Dark angels hovered there.

 How those words turn beams so bright,
flashing like Lucifer, Prince of Light,
or like the serpent once coiled in tree,
which still spits and bites its enemy.
 
Or gleaming like mythical words
of our mythical parents,
before they blamed the snake,
and turned and killed each other.
                   ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

What lonely words! How cold,
they brighten Hell with lone-ness
greater than any fall or wall
“I will do exactly as I wish to do.”
 
They suggest alternatives the will
has known and fled, to find its frozen stand
“I will continue as long as I wish.”
What a sad forever! Is there a greater pain?
 
How often till she spoke had she rehearsed
yet would not speak, to husband,
mother, mother-in-law, but only
to a small, dependent, pleading child.
                   ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

She fired bright rays at Helplessness
with the fierceness of a laser.
Ah, wounding! rejecting, not caring,  
“Exactly as I wish to do” – spoken like a viper.
 
 The child’s request she termed “Reproach,”
her mirrored self-hate, inward foil turned out,
as though Innocence were required
to reveal that self-destruction
 
Pain for this Child – and other children….
Those gem-like words scattered many rays,
long-reaching, some bright enough
to cast a “loved one’s” Shadow visible
                   ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
I take and turn this diamond back and forth.
It flashes, it gleams, and burns,
it speaks to me of spells, and secrets
“Is that why? Is that why?”
 
“I will do exactly as I wish to do.”
She wished to die, in little pieces
and fought, cat-like, those who tried to stop her.
The role of Child was not to question….
 
I never gained the clarity this gem reveals,
its message now the gift of understanding,
explaining how a mother hurts herself,
and how child’s pain can come to be
 
I take this diamond
to my inner window, where I ask
the Sister of a Book, and of my Soul –
to help me see this right
                    ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

 This Sister gives me words which show the Light
which is the Life of that and any gem,
the Beam which runs through all our air
and here and there delays encaptured, bent, still bright
 
And for those other Wicked Words,
I quote the book she wrote, unrhymed, unchanged.
Now see this Soul of Happiness,
whose Secret should be Mother to us all:
                   ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

“Love casts out fear.
Since I came to love God
with my whole being
and with all the strength of my heart
Fear has left me.
 
“Even if I were to hear
the most terrifying things
about God’s justice
I would not fear him at all
because I have come to know him well.
 
“God is love and His Spirit is peace.
I see now that my deeds
which have flowed from love
are more perfect than those
which I have done out of fear.
 
 “I have placed my trust in God
and fear nothing
I have given myself over to His holy will;
let him do as He wishes,
and I will still love him.”  [ii]  
                   ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Oh, Sisters Both, thank you for your words,
these Mother-Words which help me grow – 
the sad and painful words
from a strange mother’s fall to death,
 
radiant words which speak
what her damaged heart should wish to say –
implied in her cruel and haughty hate,
from her own Childhood – fearing with despair,
 
the stamping of rebellious feet
“I will do exactly as I wish to do.”
What a sad life those words provided,
kicking and screaming, dragged through Earth to Heaven
 
I am thankful to read the other’s phrase,
“I have given myself over to His holy will.”
In trying to follow these I can also say
“Fear has left me….I fear nothing.”
                   ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

It takes a crystal speck of human Frailty
to refract that lovely Light.
Thank you, Sister-Mothers,
for your gifts that help my sight.
 
                                                                        (2000s ?) 


[i]  “The Twelve Steps”.  Alcoholics Anonymous.  {https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-steps}  (accessed January 11, 2022).
“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives
over to the care of God
as we understood him.”    

[ii]  Sr. Faustina Kowalska.  Diary: Divine mercy In My Soul. Stockbridge, Massachusetts: Marians of the Immaculate Conception, 2001, § 589.