November poem.

We did not take care of each other
As women must.
Ignoring your need,
We bent to our own lives and turned away from your outrageous pain.
And now your keening fills up what little silence we have left
And your dreams inhabit our sleep
Insistent querulous demanding.

As I walk downtown
Past galleries and shop
Windows filled with colorful baubles
I think how sad it is that I cannot share this with you. I take notice of a picture and deep in the recesses of my thoughts I am having a conversation with you about it. I regret that you are unable to see it with me , that we wasted what small chance we had. It is from you that I have this discerning eye. It is from you that i learned to see.
Yesterday described a woman to me
Her nails were a mess
You said
And I thought how much worse it really was for you,ludicrous really, coming from
Who had nothing
and yet it bothered you enough to notice that some ones manicure needed attention.

I made mental note to write this down. To preserve this thought so I could remember it for later. to try and understand it better, to decipher the code, balm the dried lips of the lie-
this certainty of our failure to heed what we needed to heed.
To learn what must be learned
to protect each other.

Those women whose sad songs we sense rising from the ground are the bodies of our failures.
Maybe the biggest failure is that we do not learn from each other's histories and return time and time again to models which as women do not serve to unite and protect us, chattel , whore, mistress, wife, prostitute-all iron maiden degrees of ownership and shame and claim.
How have we helped each other to create more gentle nurturing shapes of safety, solace and fellowship and love.
those women whose bodies are found half buried in the eroding wetland dunes, how did they come to be there if we did not ourselves turn from them because they did not fit into the paradigm of worth that we subscribe to. how did we give away our power thus and submit ourselves to the murderous intent of a sinister model-one that we both abhor and create,
allowing ignorance to be our teacher and fear to be our arbiter.

Martha