If (Mother Of Moons)

revised, original post 2016. revised 2023 prior to setting to music.

If a window opens in a wall
where there has never been a window
and you are standing there at that moment
and watch it open;

if you cannot afterward
describe how it happened, since no bricks
appear to have been displaced
by the appearance of the window;

if no sound accompanied
the appearance of the window, yet
you showed neither amazement nor fear
upon the opening of the new window;

if the opening of the new window seems as normal to you
as the breathing of your newborn;
if you hold your newborn up to the window
to let them see the moon

as if you are holding the moon itself
up to let it shine;
if you look out the window
and observe a maze of walls, windows, light from other moons;

if you recognize that none of the walls and windows
look anything like your own and
the light from the other moons
then changes you;

if you then begin to call yourself
Mother of Moons, knowing at once
you have always been this
yet are naming this for the first time;

if you go out
to seek other windowless walls and
stand in front of them
until they change

then every examined wall shall grow a window,
shall become an entire window,
and the walls will fall as all the windows
spring open at once.