Whom Do We Thank for Women's Conferences?
Here
in this truly
no man’s land,
all is fair as understood not in terms of
Penelope’s false blondness but
that which is right and healthy.
Where
we throw
our big
hairy legs and
bottoms that make any Levi’s cry for air.
Hairy too are the faces
we acknowledge
—some were born that way—or
as signs of:
the pills we took in,
the wombs we threw out, and
plain
normal
aging.
Yet
ancient graces
walk elegantly tall or
charmingly petite
in celebration pinks and royal indigos . . .
as though the earth itself was
newly found,
the air a discovery.
We were not afraid of ideas.
Not our own.
Not those of others.
Along those corridors and
in those easy days’ assemblies,
apologizing for our being was
not on.
We were
Nobody’s wives or mistresses.
No one called us
“Mother”:
and when some daughters present did,
it was with the clearest mandate that
they picked the fight where we brought it.
We were
only ourselves:
each alone as when we were born, and
shall be, when
we died.
But
living and together,
a true power thing that
searches
researches
solving
resolving . . .
And as always
sweetly hopeful as
only women can be.
Copyright Credit: Ama Ata Aidoo, "Whom Do We Thank for Women’s Conferences?" from After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2017 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Press. Reprinted by permission of University of Nebraska Press.
Source: After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)