My Nightingale

Once upon a time my mother was a doe.
The gold- brown eyes
the grace
stayed with her from the doe-time.

Here she was
half angel half human -
the middle was Mother.
When I asked her what she would have wanted to be
she said: a nightingale.

Now she is a nightingale.
Night after night I hear her
in the garden of my sleepless dream.
She is singing the Zion of the ancestors
she is singing the long-ago Austria
she is singing the mountains and beech
forests of Bukowina.
Cradle songs
my nightingale
sings to me night after night
in the garden of my sleepless dream.