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in remembrance of me - ruth irene

(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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