Friday, March 15, 2024

Chelan Harkin: WOMEN

Photo by Molly

 WOMEN

Women, we have always been
too big for the patriarchy

We are the rivers
to its damns

even if we've been trained
to be quiet and timid
there's great, rushing power
within us

No matter the chainsaws
we are the forest
and there is simply no way
to keep Mother Nature
from growing back
again and again and again.

We are the sea,
the small boats
represent the conditioning
that ludicrously claims
it can contain us.

We've heard the demands
that the moon stay crescent
we are her great rebellion
of fullness 
and her delight
in taking up space.

We've never been
"too sensitive"
we are the frontierswomen of feeling
and sensitivity is where
our power lies
perhaps we've simply been
too powerful
for all the small models of thought
that have feebly tried to diminish us.

We are the wild
beneath every
tame trapping.

Our souls are sleeping dragons
made to awaken
to their full power
and the dawn is fast approaching.

We are the roaring thunder
just beneath the thin layer
of fake blue sky we've been taught
we must wear
like a veil
to cover our great and necessary storms.

We are the greatness
stuffed like a Universe
into a small space
before The Big Bang
explodes Her force
into power and life.

We are wild active volcanoes
in spite of the futile demands
we stay latent.

You can see why 
it takes the hyper vigilant effort
of every system
to pretend they're keeping
us down.

We are the irrepressible wholeness
humanity is growing into,

We are where evolution
is going.

― Chelan Harkin
From Let Us Dance: The Stumble and
Whirl With the Beloved


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