In one breath
A total and complete state change:
Your life dropped inside mine
As a pebble into still water.
And in its ripples
I know you
I love you
I am your Mother.
In this hover space
Suspended briefly
In the place between two worlds
After the Ego
Before the lethargy
Before the nausea,
I am alive twice,
Buzzing with the energy of two souls.
And suddenly I understand
With a clarity as sharp as grief
That feminism has lost,
if all it has done is allow us
To function as respected members
Of a broken patriarchy.
That this bloody curse
We are taught to hide as girls
To lament
To manipulate with synthetic hormones
To hold at arm’s length
Is in fact the seed of all things,
Our roots and belonging,
Our vibrancy,
Our creation.
That men continue to writhe
A clumsily combative way
Towards a distorted prize,
A power that is rigid and unfeeling,
A strength that is all muscle and no heart:
Productivity,
Financial wealth,
Success, defined by a society
Built for their own ends.
And we have believed in it.
That perhaps the violence
The aggression
The assault, the rape, the murder and oppression
Is a fragile flailing
A fight for power
A need displayed by individuals
By religions
By whole communities and cultures
To invert a natural order –
That some of our magic
Might rub off on them
In the fray.
For we glitter with the joy of beginnings.
We make space for the new,
Amongst the crowded wisdom
Of our shining bones.
And as we are taken over by creation,
Or exist in the aura of its potential,
We understand true Power –
That it moves through us,
but is not ours to hold on to.
That we must stand by as it passes.
That it is a letting go,
An opening,
A softening,
A loving.
That for every fist,
For every knife,
For every cruelty.
We blaze with
the everlasting
potency of peace.