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.
