Not Someone Else's Daydream

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Conventional husbands of the sixties quaked

when their wives discovered Ms magazine 

and The Feminine Mystique.

We looked in the mirror and discovered

our eyes had grown determined.

Our wings flapped and fluttered 

against confines

until we bent the bars

with the force of our will,

the cage door opened,

and we burst through.

There is more pain in birthing self

than birthing others.

Much bleeding, and much healing.

Some thoughts in desperate midnights

of giving up

but we stuck around in hopes

it would get better.

Mostly, it did.

The jackals had come 

to feast upon our bones,

but a wily raven warned us,

so we spirited them away.

Within the forest deep,

we put them back together

with owl songs and wing feathers,

and learned a language

of our own making.

Then we re-entered our lives

as ourselves,

no longer 

someone else's daydream.

for Kerry's fantastic prompt at Real Toads: Individualism. Three wonderful examples are given: Anais Nin, Alice Walker and Anne Sexton. These are the thoughts that came. The 70's were a pivotal time for me, and for the women of my day. Consciousnesses were being raised all over the place, and it was not the greatest time to be a chauvinistic male.