Old Women
Old women are forgotten wombs
whose graceless bodies have fed
the word, then been sent
to sit in its shadow
not quite seen, not acknowledged,
not nurtured
They are more patient than God
Old women are crucified
with nails of oppression and poverty
Equality is a Damoclean Sword
when age freckles out-number
soft, sweet patches of youth
Old women have scarred and bloody knees
from kneeling in submission to lesser minds
who felt bigger from the looking down
A rosary of sorrows is strung
through the weary fingers
of old women
They are hung on the crucifix of youth
and beauty to wither into dust
Alone in cubicles and corners,
frayed photos beneath their coats
Old women remember children
who have long forgotten them
They do not seek a man’s arms,
for that is not a refuge, but a honeyed trap
where souls are flayed beyond recognition
Such wondrous minds
Living libraries of life
Vision and experience left untouched
because it is not behind a pretty face
Behold the woman
She is a wealth of wisdom, power,
beauty and courage
yet she is left beside the road
of living
Her reckoning will come
Until then...she endures
Civilizations come
and go
on our small orb
Empires "return back to sand"
Trapped in the
cage of time
We can only
surmise what happened
to the generations
before we appeared on the scene
There are those among us
whose life's work
is to find the keyhole
to the vanished worlds
Researchers find
traces of what once
in the earth
We are hanging
a Damoclean sword
but perhaps by
learning about how
our ancestors coped we can save
ourselves from the
vagaries of fate
Throughout the long ages
Bards have created
pictures of love
and honor
So, bards of America
Lift up your pens!
So that future generations will know how we
really felt about our blue world