"Woman," A Poetry Post

In the jungles of Brazil's struggling economy,
in the small villages of the Congo,
in the rice paddies of Thailand,
in the Indian ghettoes,
there is a woman.

She is in the background,
putting her foot down,
dancing the Samba to the drum in her heart,
breaking it down to the Boloba,
flicking her wrist in Apsara,
reliving this year's Holi.

Where there is poverty,
a woman is stomping,
still hanging clothes on the line,
still reading bedtime stories,
still consoling her struggling husband.

She is humming a survivor's song,
turning herself about and
looking up into the heavens,
in the middle of a war,
in the middle of a storm,
in the middle of a dark fatwa.

She is still reaching up her arms to the sky and
pressing her fingertips
through the suffering and
into the next dimension.

While the men are killing or
defending and
sweating or
snickering and
providing or
pilfering,
there is a woman in place,
pop-locking and dropping it in the
New Orleans bowl,
throwing back a glass of wine
while singing her song of memories
over ashes in Santa Barbara,
keeping time to a
seasonal group dance
in the undeveloped forest.

She is moving the earth
with her rhythm.

She is in position
to dismantle the universe.

T. D. James-Moss