Happy Women's Month! and since im poor, im just gonna offer this old work for all the great and grave women in my life.
My Poetry
d. steine
If my poetry is filled with women,
it is only because the branches of my life
were tended by them
even before it was a stalk.
Like you I was a seed inside a woman
and from the moment I sprouted
from the shell of her womb
my roots were taught to dig deep
into the soil of life,
past layers after layers
of stony indifference and shallow water
to drink from the mouth of this earth.
Under the sky of women's love
my branches were free to seek out
the layers between myself and the sky,
in the garden of women's love
they guided my roots
to sink even deeper
and not to wander wide.
There was a woman
whose smiles and eyes flashed
like white stars as she named for me
the constellations in the sky,
Orion and Sirius,
of what I would have to bear,
major and minor.
There was a woman
who spoke to me in meter and rhyme,
who fed me my first sweet fruits of metaphors
whose aroma and flavors I could still taste even now.
There was a woman who tucked me
between warm bed sheets and blankets,
soft pillows on my head, like her breast,
so that I could dream and in the morning
be set free to discover who I am to be.
Father is only a name
I barely remember. Brother
is the son of my uncle and aunt.
If there are so many women in my poetry
it is only because I have been loved
by plenty as I have loved and lost many.
From women springs
the blossom of my summer laughter.
There will always be women
in my poetry for I know
with a rooted certainty as deep as my roots
that when I could no longer smile
nor sing to the wind nor feel the moist
of the earth, when I have forgotten my name
for the windows of my eyes had witnessed
their final silent sunset,
there would be women,
it would be a woman
even if I no longer have my poetry,
who would shed and share her warmth
from the tears and her arms
for me.
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it has been that kind of week.
and im plunged into what i have personally labeled as "my march madness". its my third year going crazy over those i adore.
women. its filipino women's month, in case you didn't know.
still, i find it odd that here i am, working for women, and yet there is not one out there that is there for me.
issues issues issues.
but then, unlike many, i did not love so that i would be love back. i have to admit that it was one of those faint hopes that i carried, but then, we all know what happens to faint hopes.
i still haven't figured out what it is that keeps me from turning off the lights....
..or perhaps i did. i had a chat with one of sisters, and at least i knew what was lacking, and what was maddening....
ahhh, life.
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