In "My Mother's Eyes," which is a longer poem than "Two Black Eyes" (94 lines vs. 20 lines), the searching heart again takes us on his spiritual journey to find those lost black eyes: "Seeking and seeking my dead mother, / I found the Deathless Mother. / The lost love of my earthly mother / I found in my Cosmic Mother."
The opening lines again reveal that all important image: "Whence came the black-eyed light, / Flickering in my life a moment?" In the first stanza, the poet invokes other incarnations that had surely allowed him the experience of those eyes of a beloved mother. But instead of remaining on the earth plane, this special poet/guru has the unique ability to take us beyond the earth level and reveal to us his transcendence into cosmic experience, where his real mother has always had her abode.
But before bringing us to such lofty heights, he keeps us earthbound long enough to share his experience: "Many a time / By bitter speech and sadness driven, / The boat of my life found safety / In the harbor of those two eyes." His metaphor of a boat finding safety in a harbor is such an effective poetic device that portrays his experience so brilliantly, and enriches our understanding.
The journey progresses until finally the seeker understands:
The cloud voice of Mother divine
Burst through the firmament within:
"Many times have I fed thee
The life-blood of My milk
From the breasts of many mothers.
Your black-eyed mother,
Whom you lost awhile,
Was none else but Me, only Me . . ."
Divine Mother continues to explain his deluded situation: that he had not lost his mother at all. Those two black eyes are symbols of a love that was impossible to lose. The heart of the searching devotee is filled because it was, in fact, never empty. The earthly mother merely represents the heavenly mother, Divine Mother, and though the earthly traveler may lose mother after mother through incarnation after incarnation, that same seeker/traveler never loses the Divine Mother though he incarnate a million times.
To the young Mukunda who became Paramahansa Yogananda, Divine Mother became real, and through his realization he understood that he would always find a safe harbor in those two black eyes.
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Books by Linda Sue Grimes:
Jiggery-Jee's Eden Valley Stories
Singing in the Silence: Poems of Faith
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