A Confession and A Poem (Not Mine)

Natalie Portman, Viola Davis, and Scarlet Johansson
I attended the Women's March last year, the largest gathering of protesters in Seattle since anyone began keeping records. It was a gorgeous day from start to finish with strangers squeezing the extra inch to let other marchers on the bus and customers bussing tables when the small restaurants along the route were overwhelmed once the day's activities ended. It was in all honesty, one of the most memorable days of my life.

Dear Reader, this year I allowed the beginning of a head cold, the light rain, and the last year's political nightmare to dissuade me from getting on the bus. I'm not proud of this. Later, I realized if I had made plans with a group of friends (who were meeting up before the march) it would have catapulted me out of my funk --- so I will remember that for next year.

Instead, I told myself I had to make really good use of the day --- beyond grading papers and doing laundry (both of which I am now behind on). I worked on poems, sent out a packet of poems for submission, and then I wrote a letter to someone whom I had been wanting to write for over a year. Something about the day gave me that "now or never" push to ask for what I really want from this world. And even if my letter remains unanswered, or isn't answered as I hope for, I've done the hard work of putting into the universe what I want. Please wish me luck and I promise to report back.

In the meantime here is a poem by the poet who has most inspired me to write and to live well.

Planetarium


   Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750—1848) astronomer, sister of William; and others. 

  A woman in the shape of a monster   
  a monster in the shape of a woman   
  the skies are full of them

  a woman      ‘in the snow
  among the Clocks and instruments   
  or measuring the ground with poles’

  in her 98 years to discover   
  8 comets

  she whom the moon ruled   
  like us
  levitating into the night sky   
  riding the polished lenses

  Galaxies of women, there
  doing penance for impetuousness   
  ribs chilled   
  in those spaces    of the mind

  An eye,

          ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
          from the mad webs of Uranusborg

                                                            encountering the NOVA   

  every impulse of light exploding

  from the core
  as life flies out of us

             Tycho whispering at last
             ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’

  What we see, we see   

  and seeing is changing

to continue reading this poem by Adrienne Rich

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