In some other life.......

[image from nationalgeographic.com]

In some other life,

I've been a Buddhist,
meditating in a stone shelter
high on the
sheer rock face
of the Himalayas.
I know this,
because
my heart is pulled
there.

I feel
I must
 have lived
once
in an ashram
in India,
loving
all the colors
of the market,
and the joy
in peoples' eyes,
bathing
my face
in the Ganges,
setting
my loved one
aflame
at the water's edge.

Far back,
my wolf woman wisdom
tells me,
I was
burned at the stake
as a witch,
for my woman's
knowing,
and men's fear
of my powers.

In a thatched hut
on the African velde,
I raised
dark-eyed children,
and communed
with a wise old
elephant
who kept
my secrets.

Once,
in waking dream,
I had a vision
of
row upon row
of blanket-wrapped
dead-eyed women,
weaving through
the bitter cold
of a Gulag
morning.
I can still
see them,
in my mind's eye,
and remember the chill
with which
I knew
I had been there.

If we believe
we might sometime
have been
both the abused animal
and the abuser,
the beaten child
and the batterer,
the mother,
the daughter,
the father,
the son,
then our hearts
can begin
to understand
we all are capable
of loving,
also
of harming,
of being
both oppressor
and
 oppressed.

Maybe,
this way,
we can
replace
judgement
with compassion,
"difference"
with brotherhood,
with sisterhood.
Maybe then
we'll understand,
on this planetary home,
we're all
sisters
under the skin.
We are
all kin.