God in a cup


POETRY                                                                                                                                                  

May 2019. Christian Journal for Global Health 6(1) 

My Mother Weakens 
Sarah Larkina 

a BA (Religious Studies), MA (Pastoral Theology), Poet, works for Integral Alliance, London, UK 

 

The world turns and bodies burn and fall 

Many call for help and justice 

As the sun rises and the summer breeze  

Lifts beauty’s veil 

Sailing boats glide effortlessly  

Through many-shaded blue tones 

Birds fly to their homes 

And grief, like a lock, snaps into place 

And many of the poor and weak enraged at their imprisonment  

Lift their eyes to look the rich and powerful in the face 

 

My mother weakens and waits 

Hating her powerlessness  

As evening falls and the night within deepens 

Into prayer and peace 

Dreaming now of a life lived outside 

Many-shaded and defiant 

To become again a child reliant 

On the light shining from a parent’s eyes 

Now a prisoner of a body, locked in 

 

Strength torn from His body stripped  

Whipped and defenceless   

Played upon death’s instrument  

Until silence fell and darkness covered the day 

The ripped veil moving in sorrow’s breeze 

Beckoning us to move through tears within 

To the other side of sickness and sin 

Satan’s curse shattered as the lock turned 

And God’s Son died  

 

Hide or make a break for freedom  

 

The enraged raise their fists 

My mother weakens and waits 

As evening falls and the night deepens 

Into prayer and peace 

 

 

 

 

 

 



118  Larkin 

 

May 2019. Christian Journal for Global Health 6(1)  

          
 

 

 
Competing Interests: None declared.     
 
Correspondence: Sarah Larkin (née Fordham), London, UK. sarahlarkin68@gmail.com. 
http://scfordham.blogspot.com.  Integral Alliance (www.integralalliance.org)        

 
Cite this article as:  Larkin S. My mother weakens. Christian Journal for Global Health. Nov 2018; 
6(1):117-118. https://doi.org/10.15566/cjgh.v6i1.291  
 
© Author. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 
Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any 
medium, provided the original author and source are properly cited. To view a copy of the 
license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

 

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mailto:sarahlarkin68@gmail.com
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