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.