A Chilean Guide to Living
My mother taught me
to use elbow grease
to iron my blouses
to prepare someday
to iron my husband’s fine cotton shirts.
It was Neruda, who taught me
to use the arms of my heart
to use the feet of my heart
to iron out the wrinkles in our Blue Planet.
Millenial | Candle Burning
This woman stealing into the night. . . to write.
Her soul needs to flush itself
that the morn bear less burden than this night.
She peers at beads of bracelets on her wrist as she writes, envisioning chains on ancients, woman scribes before her committed to death for voicing a smidgen of their soul-
through quill’s scratching their heart’s desire to be
equal with men, not hating them but demanding like freedom
to enjoy
that which men take
for GRANITE
Let her be bold expression.
Self-government. Originality.
Woman’s right to choose her own husband. No less her lovers.
The right to minister at the altar. No less to worship in the temple.
The right to scream disapproval if upon her bed a rogue spots her sheets.
What kind of god created the lion’s share of women weaker and men without grace? It was not the mother of Love. Rather the invention of man’s greed.
I pray as my candle flickers its light from the last night of the 20th Century:
May some day the reflective light of Truth -as well birth women intelligently with expectancy of heroic womanhood as in manhood – be welcomed.
Woman balanced in a listening world, praising her solar strength.
Not celled as in some gender weakness.
In this millennium Light mankind will be born unshackled to grow distinguished by love.