The Poet and Her Craft
womb poems
that's a woman poet
men never write womb poems
they shy away from uterus images --
pendulosities hanging from trees, old bags --
or bladder prolapse metaphor
(indicating age; the burden of childbirth)
in a man poem, labor means pickaxe
Women can write about lilacs,
daffodils, bare boughs in winter,
fields of daisies and the cry of the red-tailed hawk,
fiercely flying over castles on the Rhine, barges on the Nile,
and streaming hair
and streaming hair
We have felt it all, felt it all
heard the "voices dying with a dying fall"
Shall we begin again?
Throw out the Greeks and Graves,
Basho and his walking stick,
Romantics -- no, not Keats!
We will carry words
carefully, in clay vessels made by Hopi women,
water to the well
and draw it out again
magic spring refreshed
