This poem was not necessarily inspired by Angelou and her work, though it very well could have been. It shares many qualities with her work, an optimism, a desire to celebrate women, a belief in the triumph of the human spirit. It was, however, created during the immediate aftermath of having to leave, for medical reasons, a longtime career of running a university women's center and working extremely hard to help women empower themselves.
One day during this period of adjustment and grieving, as I wrote in my journal about what I missed most about my work, I reminisced about the extraordinary moments when women I had worked with would finally step up and seize their own power and take charge of their lives and their dreams. This poem came out of those memories.
SHE TAKES HER POWER IN
HER OWN HANDS
and pours it over her
body,
drenching hair and face,
standing in pools of
herself,
dripping excess. She
takes up her power
with strong hands and
holds it close
to her breasts like an
infant, warming it
with her own heat. She
draws her power
around her like a
hand-loomed shawl,
a cloak to keep the wind
out,
pulling it tighter,
tugging and patting it
smooth against the
winter.
She pulls her power from
branches
of dead trees where it
has hung so long
neglected that it has
changed from white to deep
weathered gold. She wraps
her hair
in power like the light
of distant stars,
gleaming through the dark
emptiness
in and around everything.
She lets her power down
into a dank well, down
and down,
clanking against stone
walls, until
she hears the splash, a
little further
to submerge it
completely, then draws it
hand over rubbed-raw
hand, heavy enough
to make her shoulders and
forearms ache
and shudder with strain,
pulls it up
overflowing, her power,
and drinks in deep,
desperate gulps
out of a lifetime of
thirst. She weaves her power
into a web, a cloth, a
shroud, and hangs it
across the night where it
catches the light of stars
and refracts it into a
shining glory,
brighter than the moon
and colder. She holds her
power
in her hands at the top
of the hill
in the top of the tree
where she steps out
onto the air and her
wings
of power buoy her to ride
the thermals
higher and higher toward
the sun,
her new friend.
When she returns,
she folds her power over
and over
into a tiny, dense pellet
to swallow,
feeling its mass sink to
her center
and explode, spreading
throughout to transform
her into something
elemental,
a star,
a mountain,
a river,
a god.
Published in Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)
