95poems/kathy

A HEALING POEM FOR KATHY

We hold our hope in our womb,
we hold our dreams,
the eternal sense
of possibility,
of new beginnings,
of begetting ourselves
a new,
in giving birth
to our children,
who are another chance
at ourselves,
to make right
what was wronged,
to give to where
hungry neglect lies
acid and damp.

We hold our chance
at redemption
between our legs,
in what the ancients called
the palace of the child,
so much more poetic
than the Western
uterus,
that it made me cry
just to hear it,
the words alone
rectified
a terrible wrong.

The womb
is first of all
a body part,
but more than that
a state of mind,
an intention toward
life,
to bring our love
into fruitful form.
Old age and hysterectomies
are powerless
in the face of it,
it is the phantom limb
which will not be silenced,
it twitches
and sings,
and aches, and grieves
for what has been
denied it.

Our rooms are wombs
and our fruit bowls
upon the counter,
all that nestles
and shelters
reflects this great
mistresss of form,
this mother of all
becoming.

Our wombs
are the mornings
of our lives,
beginning
again
and again,
their spirit never leaves us
nor does the wisdom
of their lives,
nor the mothering
which they are.
We can enter
the truth
of our womb,
as if it were a room
and wait there
as long as we must,
we can wrap ourselves
within what it is
like a cloak,
we can go together
hand in hand
knowing that
what it is
we are.

6/27/95