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For Women's History Month: Two Poems of Woman [1]

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Date: 2023-03-01  

Gustav Klimt – The Three Ages of Women

Here is a poem in honor of Women’s History Month...

Two Poems of Woman

I. Women Sustain the Word

Long before the doings

Of the day

Were recorded in

Cuneiform on clay

Or hieroglyphics on papyrus

Women maintained the word,

Being the first to greet the growing

In her womb –

Speaking to it long before

The unknown child appeared

Among the gatherings,

The groups,

The tribes...

After the birth,

It was woman who fed

The children milk

And songs

And chants

And names

And stories,

Passing language forward

To the newest generation –

Keeping alive

The heritage of

The People.

II. Wise Women

Well beyond the thirty thousand years

We can guess at,

Women collected and collated

A growing knowledge of plants –

First for food

They dug up roots, gathered seeds

Plucked leaves and stems

To boil and bake and serve raw,

They designed recipes

And expanded ways of cooking.

Too, from those ancient times,

The "inedible" stems, flowers, roots and leaves

Were turned into herbal potions,

Teas and salves

Which could change

The workings of bodies

And restore

Wellness to the ill –

A way of Nature's healing and re-balance

Was discovered...

These wise women

Gathered lore

A lifetime at a time

To be handed down

Mother to daughter,

Sister to sister.

This activity, this sacred work,

Combined with the rituals of childbirth

And the monthly cycles of life

Gave rise to the rudiments of medicine,

Long before men usurped

This field of knowledge

In their demand for soldiers

To survive and fight again

In their brutal wars.

Carl Scott Harker ©2023

__________________________________________

My latest book of poetry is now available on Amazon, you can find more great poems in here: An Engineer of Words.

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