International Women’s Day 3/8/09

Women are gatherers, seed sowers, reapers, grain grinders, cooks. Women are bound feet, warmed or left cold by the lit or unlit red lantern. Kung fu movie daughters avenging father’s death with martial art skills. Mary in the Pieta, grieving a lost child. Kali, ferocious, destructive, unstoppable.

Women are warriors, peacekeepers, heart breakers…born into brothels, or with a silver spoon…dying in childbirth, of broken hearts, unfulfilled, forgotten…or dying filled with hope….living forever, remembered, the Ghost Dance massacre at Wounded Knee, Darfur, Rwanda…breathing, dreaming, dancing…Voting here, not there. Not allowed to drive, covered up. Or pilots and red dresses. Saintly, sinful, human…Mother Teresa and Lizzie Borden. Selfless and selfish. Self-defenders. Sayers of the names of rapists and oppressors. Singers of the names of allies and heroes. Penelope, waiting faithfully on the shore. Persephone, living part time in hell. Hera, doing what she must. Women are the night and the moon, the hated, the haters, the healers and the healed.

Women are free here…or without a voice, enslaved there. The vanquished, the vindicated and the victorious. Giving birth to the wise and the wicked…women are mothers of men, daughters of men, sisters of men, partners of men. Women are in cocoons or cages, gilded and not, or shedding skin like snakes…wild and free, moving into the future, remembering the past – drawn to this moment, standing over the bones in stilettos or bare feet. Yin, ever yin, even in yang…this is the balance. Men are the fathers, the sons, the brothers and the partners of women….will they stand here too?

Toni Josephson