Wild Women's Voices

[image by Sanura at pixdaus.com]

All the Voices

trying to shape who we are:
“children should be seen and not heard”
“who do you think you are?”
“I’ll give you something to cry about”
“do it to prove you love me”
“I want, therefore you must give me....”
“you’re my wife, dammit, and you’ll act like my wife”
“you don’t understand a man’s needs”
“three babies in three years?
That’s what women are for, isn’t it?”
(this from a doctor,
a male, naturally)
and then, the nail in the coffin:
“things were all right
till you started thinking
you were a Person.”


Our inner voices
clamored
to be heard
but we were well trained
to shut them out,
not pay attention,
against all reason
convince ourselves
that other peoples’ needs
were more important
took precedence.
Putting oneself on the list?
Wouldn’t that be selfish?


How does one value self
when one has never been valued?


But the writing voice: that voice
they could not silence.
In the scratching of the pen on paper,
the pounding of the typewriter keys,
that Self began to get harder to ignore.


It began to bang up against
the bars of the cage,
rattle the locks,
drag the chains along the floor,
very annoying to a spouse.


It was all over
soon after she discovered
the “click” of The Feminine Mystique,
drew in great gasping breaths
of relief and recognized truth
at the words of Gloria Steinem
and Ms Magazine,
days when “Hit the Road, Jack”
became her anthem.


When she read
the words of Desiderata:
No less than the moon
and the stars,
you have a right to be here,
she wept.
She had not known that.


Midway along
the river of life,
she found
traveling was smoother
when she flowed
with the current,
instead of fighting it.
When the clamor
of voices
lessened
so that she could hear,
she realized
that the voice within,
unheeded for years,
had never told her
an untruth.


That voice,
she discovered,
was her deepest wisdom;
it was her
truest friend and,
when a best friend
lovingly tells you
a profound truth,
she learned
it is best to listen.
That voice
that a lifetime
of people
had tried to stifle
was her
highest knowing,
and her most direct
way home.


From the day
she began to listen,
she recognized
that a wise
Wild Woman
lived within,
full of the ocean,
the earth and sky,
with a voice
like the wind.


The Wild Woman
told her
Solitude
was the
Peaceful Way.
She chose
a wolf-pup
to accompany her
in latter days.


She hears
a song of the sea
inside, feels the
call of the wild,
follows the pull
of the moon
and tides,
keeps the heart
of a child.


She withdrew
from the fray,
she rose,
somewhat
tattered and sore,
retired
to a tranquil isle:
she will struggle
no more.


To the young ones
who follow,
she’d offer
this bit of truth:
“Listen first to
the Voice Within,
for a happier youth.”