She talks in truthful tones
and walks the talk with steps so certain
they turn a mystifying maze into
a map-like meditation leading
toward the center of a labyrinth.
She moves with lawful command
from laundry to laboratory, labor to love shack
bartering with beautiful brain, brainy beauty
through boardroom deals or backroom brawls.
She gives life and bears witness
to the miracle of motherhood,
touching with tenderness
that nurtures a newborn.
She aches with half her heart; keeping
the other half strong enough to withstand
quakes and flooding and bullets and beatings.
She loves fully with heart and soul
and skin and bones and sticks and stones
through moans and groans
in combat, comfort and discomfort zones.
She is wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend
flawed and fierce, grace and groove
beauty with a speck of beast
soft yet tough; best not to be messed with.
She is human, wrapping her all-weather arms
around promise-filled humanity
with an embrace only she can muster.
She holds up half the sky
and braces half this brittle world
with feet planted firmly on the ground,
keeping above and below from colliding,
crumbling around and caving within those
of us already leaning on her all the while.
Still, with only a fraction of the whole
the fight for her equal half goes on…
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Is gender equality, here and everywhere else, achievable?
I realize I use the word beauty a few times in a post about women and girls. Rest assured, I find men and boys beautiful, too.
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Congratulations to the awesome folks at One Stop Poetry who host OneShotWednesday for winning a Shorty Award in Art. Woo hoo!
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Image by corky100
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Belinda, this is just gorgeous. You say it so well, your voice speaks for all your sisters in this world.
Thanks, Ayala. It’s my last women/girl-oriented post for Women’s History Month.
smiles. yes you do all your sisters proud and on many a day you hold up more than half…and for that i am thankful…smiles. and thank you for the congrats!
Well said, both in message and form, with a very skillful use of alliteration and interior rhyme, as well. The fight never seems to end…but like woman, it endures and progresses and refuses to give up.
oh love it…esp. these lines were so beautiful
She holds up half the sky
and braces half this brittle world
with feet planted firmly on the ground…
Belinda — This one stopped me in my tracks after reading it. I don’t all the fancy words about poetry, but I can say this poem is a powerful read, but it’s also fun. I really loved these words,
“bartering with beautiful brain, brainy beauty
through boardroom deals or backroom brawls.”
Betcha can’t say that fast ten times:~) What’s wonderful about your poetry is that it’s so much more than the words I read; the message just glows out at me, like a jewel that becomes bright as your words cast their light on it.
The “fight for our equal half” goes on, but at my age, I see the progress we’ve made. I know there’s still much to do, but barriers drop every day. Now, if we can only reach out to the women who are still trapped and use our well-earned power to lift them up.
I’m still waiting to hear about the women I am sponsoring. I absolutely loved this idea. Thanks:~)
This is so very well written!!
I am amazed..
Gender Equality is a humorous term. Humor this- none of the Official/Government form has a column for Mother’s name! This is after Supreme Court has judgements that Mother is also a Natural Guardian of a child! So much so for the law. The woman who slogs her life till death because the husband abandons the family gets to be known nowhere. The only daughter who is still slogging out to survive at the age of 33 has to write her damned father’s name because that’s how the SYSTEM is!!
I wish the things change SOON!
EVERYBODY’S beautiful!
just the way we are
everybody’s made of love and little bits of stars
everybody’s beautiful
everybody shines
everybody’s somebody shining all the time.
EVERYBODY!
Really grooved on the stick stones, moans groans, combat zones verse — like a song, Belinda.
xoox
Very nice Belinda and balance takes two halfs and you give such beautiful credit to the feminine half here yet giving credit to her counter part shining…thank you..bkm
Oh, wow. This is so well written!
Gorgeous and evocative. I feel my words cannot justify the exquisite words that you have rendered. Thanks for sharing your poetic soul.
This is a beautiful ode to women everywhere, Belinda.