Poems By and About Women

Carol Lynn Pearson has written poetry that speaks to all women.


SUPPORT GROUP

You can fall here.
We are a quilt set to catch you
A quilt of women's hands
Threaded by pain made useful.

With generations of comfort-making
Behind us, we offer this gift
Warm as grandma's feather bed
Sweet as the Heavenly Mother's
Lullaby song.

You can fall here.
Women's hands are strong.


SECOND WEDDING

This time a woman
Not a girl.

A necklace
Not a pearl

An orchid in September
Not a branch in May

Abundant with a hundred
Tumbling loves
Fruited and golden
To gift a man

She says "I do"
And knows "I can."


TURNING

I turn
But not away.

Toward
(Like a sunflower)
Light
Warmth.
I turn toward life.

The decision
Is in my roots
And it is deep.

You are free
To face the ground
If you have no will
To lift
And I will be sad.

I am willing to be sad
But not to be dead
And so I turn.


POWER

When she learned that she
Didn't have to plug into
Someone or something
Like a toaster into a wall

When she learned that she
Was a windmill and had only
To raise her arms
To catch the universal whisper
And turn
Turn
Turn

She moved.

Oh, she moved
And her dance was a marvel.


BEAUTIFUL

Julie wanted to be beautiful
As a man in the desert wants water.

She wanted to be beautiful
And she wanted people to say she was beautiful
And so Julie finally clipped from the paper
The little ad about Alexander's
Modeling Agency that she'd almost
Clipped out every morning for a month
As she studied it over her cereal and toast.

On the fifteenth
Alexander examined Julie's knockout eyes
And good brows and let down her ponytail
So that the long, blond hair fell Rapunzel-like
Nearly to her twenty-two inch waist.
And he circled her five feet nine
One hundred and twenty pound body
Like an auctioneer and told her she was
Fantastic and to come back when
She had taken off ten
And wrote down for her to return
On the thirtieth.

On the thirtieth, however,
Julie missed the appointment
As she was suffering the effects
Of a fluke accident brought on by swallowing
A fourth of a box of baking soda
So she could throw up
For the third time that day.

In fact
Two hundred friends and family
Filed by her coffin
Which featured four dozen roses
And many cried and many paused to say
How beautiful she looked.


MS. MEAD SAID SO

In every tribe
No island excepted

Basket weaving
If done by men
Is hot stuff
Real buff:
Masculine.

And basket weaving
If done by women
Is mere fluff
Not enough:
Feminine.

So women, of course
Are leaving their weaving

And whatever will we
Float the children in?


CHRIST CHILDREN

Let us make you a child again
For Christmas.

Let us put you in a cradle
As we put Jesus in the manger
Pre-crucifixion and sweet
With just born eyes that meet
The wonder of star and smile.

For a little while
Let us make you children again.
Here there are no nails
In your innocence.
Here there is over you
A sky bursting bright
And under you the breast of a mother
Softer than hay.

You will not stay
I know
And Jesus will have to go
To Golgotha:
His little hands were born
To bear a cross.
And you, my darling,
Came to the same sad world
Where trust is lost
At the hands of those who
Know not what they do.
At the end of the story
The Christ will rise
And so will you.

But let us make you
Children again for Christmas
(The Christ children that you are)
Touched only by swaddling
And the light of a star.


BEARABLE

I remember saying it,
"Oh, I am so happy!"
I remember that I could not
Not say it, I was so happy.

I remember
The flowers on the wallpaper
Your fingers on my face
How the gold flame
Of the white candle danced
And danced and how the words came
Because they could not
Not come,
"Oh, I am so happy!"

I see it, hear it, feel it
But through gauze.

Angels are assigned
a kindness, I do believe
To cover heaven and love
With a curtain
And blur them bearable
For those who look back.


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