Meme from all around my circle

[muccamukk]

When you see this, post a poem to your own journal.

My hands
Are not my mother's hands,
Bright red from bleach,
An blinding rage.
My hands will dare
To reach for love.
No more to
Cower in the shallow grave my
Mother's hands did dig for me.
There'll be no name
Carved into a thin white stake;
Instead, an upright
Forceful fist
Shoved wrist first in the ground
Where I lie and need not
Make a sound.
And every woman
Who comes near
Will peer into her own
Bludgeoned soul
And kiss the fist
That dares demand:
To love a woman
...Leave her whole.

-- Ferron

Comments

[nenya_kanadka]

I...like that one.

I think my mother was happy, but I know I don't want her life. Some of the things that made life most worth living for her are the exact ones that would stifle me and drive me completely crazy. (Married at age 22 to the first man she loved, six kids, 30 years on a backwoods farm, stay-at-home mom.) A queer, childless city girl...was probably not what she expected from her eldest. But then there were things like her love for art and reading that she's passed on to me.

*looks in poem file for one to post*

I believe nothing - what need
Surrounded as I am with marvels of what is,
This familiar room, books, shabby carpet on the floor,
Autumn yellow jasmine, chrysanthemums, my mother's flower,
Earth-scent of memories, daily miracles,
Yet media-people ask, "Is there a God?"
What does the word mean
To the fish in his ocean, birds
In his skies, and stars?
I only know that when I turn in sleep
Into the invisible, it seems
I am upheld by love, and what seems is
Inexplicable here and now of joy and sorrow,
This inexhaustible, untidy world -
I would not have it otherwise.

-Kathleen Raine

[linaelyn]

Wow, that's a powerful poem.

I like this meme.