(Ecofemscape: For All My Sisters)
Stopped.
Sitting in my electric piece of technology
behind the bus belching out
children from its yellow belly.
I’m on my way back from another neurologist.
The men who keep telling me nothing
is wrong
with my body
and that botched epidurals aren’t real.
I look in my rearview and see
the faces of my daughters.
‘This is my body, which is brok—
en,’ and while my body is broken, my soul is whole
because of them.
Stopped again.
I look to my left,
and through my pane,
see the field that really should be a pain—
ting somewhere. Like something out of a fairy tale:
Her fair curves adorned
with rocks,
all unique, give Her an air
of pride and strength. Not something easy
to be trampled through.
Yes, she was lush and full
of free spirit.
The kind of princess that slays the dragon.
And then I saw the sign
on that old, rugged,
pastoral farm fence.
The men had come with their hard
hats and their tools,
Their large machines used
to rape the land. To mould it
to their will and expectation.
Moulded and flattened through
Excavators,
Bulldozers,
Graders,
Backhoes,
Loaders,
Compactors,
Scrapers,
Dump Trucks,
Pile Drivers,
And Hydraulic
Rock
Breakers.
(And you want to know a bit of iron—
y?
These men who call themselves builders first
destroy.
And these other educated men
in their white coats with their white teeth are wr—
ong.
And both groups value green
But not the same kind as She and I.)
As they begin to cut through
Her skin
my soul shudders with Her silent screams.
They won’t break Her, I say. Her
curves are too great and Her
rocks too tough, too ancient, to be moved.
And I smile as their timeline falls
behind.
They are having problems with the grading
of Her contours,
trying to smooth out Her roughness.
‘Keep fighting’ I fiercely urge Her
in a whisper,
for we are one
and the same.
But the moulders took Her boulders,
grinding and crushing
Her stones into dust.
They had finally broken her spirit.
They erected giant walls and said they’d call
it
a Herr’s plant.
But two years later, and this Monolith
remains vacant,
No soul
on site.
And I think what haunts me
most
is that they broke her for no reason.
What a waste.
What a waste
of Her
land.
Ruth Irene (she/her/hers) is a young mother to three girls, a poet, and an admitted undergraduate degree candidate at some university, somewhere. She has a poem that is being published in 2024 by Persephone's Fruit literary magazine; she has enjoyed learning some Attic Greek and would like to give a nod to Sappho in some of her poetry.
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