I look in the rearview mirror
There are more miles behind me
Than lie ahead.
Our culture would diminish me
And tell me I am becoming invisible.
I should cling to youth
So that I do not disappear.
My value as a woman
Seems to erode
The longer I travel this path.
This is a grand deception,
A seismic lie.
The world fears women
Who are growing into their power,
Who have shed their people-pleasing skins
By the side of the road.
We are angry.
We are tired.
We will not walk out onto the ice
To quietly fade away
Age is glorious.
The world has survived billions of years.
She has reinvented herself,
Spinning through fire and ice
Endless wind and implacable water
Bones shifting and cracking under her skin.
Tears and laughter etch indelible valleys across her face.
Her skin is carved away,
Exposing bedrock,
The majestic truth of who she is.
The world turns relentlessly,
And I wake up each morning.
My back aches
My heart hurts
And I stumble out of bed
In search of relevance.
What can I burn
To fuel my fury?
To transform purpose
Into a beacon visible from space?
Perhaps my grey is the ash of entire forests
Consumed by fire
Stacked black and tidy along the roadside
Clearing the earth for new growth.
I do not know how long my journey will be.
(No one does.)
I think that I will become a storm
Raging, magnificent, and inconvenient
Rolling down the road
That still lies ahead.
©2021
Jeri Sisco
House Snark 