A Woman's Choice
It's the small details:
rat's nest in his hair,
holes in her tights,
who is whose friend today at school,
making sure the right combo of green & orange
gets into their mouths, being there at 3:45
to greet the loudmouth bus driver &
rescue my five year old from bumpy sleep.
No pay, long hours, no public recognition
yet in my heart a small voice says
cancel all job interviews
hold that resume in a file waiting,
like my high heels and work suits in the cupboard,
let my degrees gather dust on the wall.
I want to be there when the first tooth falls,
a quiet rite of passage & mine to revel in.
It means postponing ego strokes.
It means no time just for me, but also
not being split down the middle working double shifts.
I can wait for the glory of a pat on the back & a salaried job.
Right now there's some small things I must attend to:
this three-year-old in pigtails, this fragile boy in the schoolyard.
published in Mothering Magazine
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
menopause poems
Medusa 1878 Arnold Bocklin
Medusa
I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved, - a bell hung ready to strike.
Sun and reflection wheeled by.
When the bare eyes were before me
and the hissing hair,
held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
formed in the air.
This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this.
Nor the rain blur.
The water will always fall, and will not fall,
and the tipped bell make no soun.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.
And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day.
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.
Louise Bogan (1897-1970) American poet,
found in Women Poets from Antiquity to Now
I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved, - a bell hung ready to strike.
Sun and reflection wheeled by.
When the bare eyes were before me
and the hissing hair,
held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
formed in the air.
This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this.
Nor the rain blur.
The water will always fall, and will not fall,
and the tipped bell make no soun.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.
And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day.
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.
Louise Bogan (1897-1970) American poet,
found in Women Poets from Antiquity to Now
Monday, June 30, 2008
Poem for Midlife women and their Mothers
August Third
by May Sarton
These days
lifting myself up
like a heavy weight,
old camel getting to her knees
I think of my mother
and the inexhaustible flame
that kept her alive
until she died.
She knew all about fatigue
and how one pushes it aside
for staking up the lilies
early in the morning,
the way one pushes it aside
for a friend in need,
for a hungry cat.
Mother, be with me
today on your birthday.
I am older than you were
when you died
thirty-five years ago.
Thinking of you
the old camel gets to her knees,
stands up,
Moves forward slowly
into the new day.
If you taught me one thing
It was never to fail life.
by May Sarton
These days
lifting myself up
like a heavy weight,
old camel getting to her knees
I think of my mother
and the inexhaustible flame
that kept her alive
until she died.
She knew all about fatigue
and how one pushes it aside
for staking up the lilies
early in the morning,
the way one pushes it aside
for a friend in need,
for a hungry cat.
Mother, be with me
today on your birthday.
I am older than you were
when you died
thirty-five years ago.
Thinking of you
the old camel gets to her knees,
stands up,
Moves forward slowly
into the new day.
If you taught me one thing
It was never to fail life.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Trust
(c) Free nature photos
a woman with too many poems in her hair
can never get enough
blue sky
the world misses her
wildness
for her, the world starts above the trees,
up
with the wisps of cloud
she flies on the back
of the blue=tailed swallow
high enough to sing, or she swings,
a leggy girl with pointed toes
pumping higher until she can see
over fences
over rose bushes
right into the blue water
of the swimming pool next door
& she learns to trust
the air that heaves her
far from earth
little beetle with silver wings
takes flight, circles
overhead
then flies diretly
into the sun
from Little Mother, Hochelaga Press, 1997
originally published in Index, the Montreal
literary calendar, 1995
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Mother Famine
You were lost to me before I was born.
When the ram’s horn blew and the temple walls came tumbling down over my head, stone by stone, at Jericho. I lost you when I ran into the forest, frightened and longing to see your pale face reflected under leaves, in between rocks, your smile of courage egging me on.
I lost you when little girls were made to lie beneath the rude soldiers rescuing them, or the sweaty uncles petting them, or the firm young brothers forcing the soft ones with songs on their tongues. You were lost to me when the first midwife was throttled and drowned, when they began to round up the healer women, looking for the devil’s teats on our bodies, then lit the bonfires.
I lost you before the Peloponesian Wars, lost you again when the Mongolian hordes rode their rough ponies through, lost you when the blue-tiled walls of Mikonos were razed by Greek soldiers. Your body bruised and buried, encased in the bogs, your memory and stories erased by Deuteronomy, by Hammurabai, by Zeus. You reign now as a faint shadow in the moon, but even there, re-named Old Man, until archeologists unearthed your wide hips and round belly, bringer of rains, harvest, and safe berth.
Give us this day our daily bread, and let us eat, remembering. Instead, our female children starve themselves bone-thin to repudiate your flesh; we slice it out of our bodies, we hide it in our fat, we choke ourselves and vomit, re-enact that first shame under the Tree, when making a human form, the labour it entails and the blood that comes with each moon became a curse.
Oh let me rekindle that fierce mother love– and weep for the mother slayers.
Can I shield my daughter from the truth that she is powerful and because of that she may be raped or killed? This is your secret, the power of birth and the real miracle of blood turning into milk (not water into wine). We, who rely on these first stories to understand our place in the world, have had a bone stuck in our throats for a very long time.
Give me back my mother love, my rising star, my Venus, the sun’s circle of life:
let the man in the sky stop building missiles and fighter F14 jets for South Korea, Pakistan, Israel and South Africa,
let the Old Man in the US Senate hear the voices of the women.
Let the African governments hear the voices of their raped and damaged daughters.
Let the Lebanese women rise, let the Pakistani women rise, let the Afghan women, the Chechen women, the Colombian women, the Rwandan women, the Venezuelan women, the Chinese women, the Uzbekistani women,
let the women in the veil, the women in purdah, the women stoned to death, the women doused with kerosene for their dowry, the women thrown down wells for honour, the women sliced open and sewn shut, the women interred,
let all the women remember you.
Your light was not always this dim.
musemother
aka jenn
When the ram’s horn blew and the temple walls came tumbling down over my head, stone by stone, at Jericho. I lost you when I ran into the forest, frightened and longing to see your pale face reflected under leaves, in between rocks, your smile of courage egging me on.
I lost you when little girls were made to lie beneath the rude soldiers rescuing them, or the sweaty uncles petting them, or the firm young brothers forcing the soft ones with songs on their tongues. You were lost to me when the first midwife was throttled and drowned, when they began to round up the healer women, looking for the devil’s teats on our bodies, then lit the bonfires.
I lost you before the Peloponesian Wars, lost you again when the Mongolian hordes rode their rough ponies through, lost you when the blue-tiled walls of Mikonos were razed by Greek soldiers. Your body bruised and buried, encased in the bogs, your memory and stories erased by Deuteronomy, by Hammurabai, by Zeus. You reign now as a faint shadow in the moon, but even there, re-named Old Man, until archeologists unearthed your wide hips and round belly, bringer of rains, harvest, and safe berth.
Give us this day our daily bread, and let us eat, remembering. Instead, our female children starve themselves bone-thin to repudiate your flesh; we slice it out of our bodies, we hide it in our fat, we choke ourselves and vomit, re-enact that first shame under the Tree, when making a human form, the labour it entails and the blood that comes with each moon became a curse.
Oh let me rekindle that fierce mother love– and weep for the mother slayers.
Can I shield my daughter from the truth that she is powerful and because of that she may be raped or killed? This is your secret, the power of birth and the real miracle of blood turning into milk (not water into wine). We, who rely on these first stories to understand our place in the world, have had a bone stuck in our throats for a very long time.
Give me back my mother love, my rising star, my Venus, the sun’s circle of life:
let the man in the sky stop building missiles and fighter F14 jets for South Korea, Pakistan, Israel and South Africa,
let the Old Man in the US Senate hear the voices of the women.
Let the African governments hear the voices of their raped and damaged daughters.
Let the Lebanese women rise, let the Pakistani women rise, let the Afghan women, the Chechen women, the Colombian women, the Rwandan women, the Venezuelan women, the Chinese women, the Uzbekistani women,
let the women in the veil, the women in purdah, the women stoned to death, the women doused with kerosene for their dowry, the women thrown down wells for honour, the women sliced open and sewn shut, the women interred,
let all the women remember you.
Your light was not always this dim.
musemother
aka jenn
Monday, May 26, 2008
Union
....I am being reminded to integrate the masculine and the feminine. to respect the Male Divinity as well as the Goddess. Six months before, on the same land, I experienced a deep and spontaneous sharing with a friend. It was as if a veil were pulled aside and I suddenly realized how alienated I had been from the Father God.
My hellfire and brimstone Christian fundamentalist upbringing had turned me off to the image of God as a punishing and critical father. In my twenties I turned to the Great Mother Goddess for comfort and healing. Now I am being guided to the next step. It is time to turn to the male side of the Divine (of my own psyche as well) to clear away the false images and find my own true relationship between the two sides.
As if to acknowledge my surrender to the task, I plunge into the pool headfirst. I am naked except for my gold ring with a triangular blue topaz, the ring I gave myself as a symbol of the sacred trinity - Father, Mother and Divine Child or Christ Being.
Kneeling in the grass, with the hot sun on my face, I pray to be shown a way to be in a true partnership of the masculine and feminine. Opening my eyes, I see two bright red dragonflies beginning their mating dance, swooping joyfully in tandem. ..."See, just like that! We can be like that and dance and fly together."
from The Woman's Retreat Book
(by a woman on retreat by herself)
My hellfire and brimstone Christian fundamentalist upbringing had turned me off to the image of God as a punishing and critical father. In my twenties I turned to the Great Mother Goddess for comfort and healing. Now I am being guided to the next step. It is time to turn to the male side of the Divine (of my own psyche as well) to clear away the false images and find my own true relationship between the two sides.
As if to acknowledge my surrender to the task, I plunge into the pool headfirst. I am naked except for my gold ring with a triangular blue topaz, the ring I gave myself as a symbol of the sacred trinity - Father, Mother and Divine Child or Christ Being.
Kneeling in the grass, with the hot sun on my face, I pray to be shown a way to be in a true partnership of the masculine and feminine. Opening my eyes, I see two bright red dragonflies beginning their mating dance, swooping joyfully in tandem. ..."See, just like that! We can be like that and dance and fly together."
from The Woman's Retreat Book
(by a woman on retreat by herself)
Friday, May 23, 2008
Tyranny of the Masculine, yearning for the feminine
Here's a telling excerpt from The Heroine's Journey by Maureen Murdock:
"What many heroines want is exactly what their fathers wanted and toook for granted--someone to take care of them....to listen to their woes, massage their battle-weary bodies, appreciate their successes and take away the pain of their losses. They want a relationship to the feminine....but they know not what is missing, so they fill the pain with more activity....
"This obsessive need to stay busy and productive keeps her from having to experience her growing sense of loss. But what is this loss? Surely she has achieved everything she has set out to do, but it has come at great sacrifice to her soul. Her relationship with her inner world is estranged.
...She will depend on no one. She drives herself relentlessly to the brink of exhaustion. She forgets how to say no, has to be all things to all people, and ignores her own need to be cared for and loved. She is out of control. Her relationship to her inner masculine has become distorted and tyrannical, he never lets her rest...."
"What many heroines want is exactly what their fathers wanted and toook for granted--someone to take care of them....to listen to their woes, massage their battle-weary bodies, appreciate their successes and take away the pain of their losses. They want a relationship to the feminine....but they know not what is missing, so they fill the pain with more activity....
"This obsessive need to stay busy and productive keeps her from having to experience her growing sense of loss. But what is this loss? Surely she has achieved everything she has set out to do, but it has come at great sacrifice to her soul. Her relationship with her inner world is estranged.
...She will depend on no one. She drives herself relentlessly to the brink of exhaustion. She forgets how to say no, has to be all things to all people, and ignores her own need to be cared for and loved. She is out of control. Her relationship to her inner masculine has become distorted and tyrannical, he never lets her rest...."
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