A Confession and A Poem (Not Mine)

Natalie Portman, Viola Davis, and Scarlet JohanssonI attended the Women's March last year, the largest gathering of protesters in Seattle since anyone began keeping records. It was a gorgeous day from start to finish with strangers squeezing the extra inch to let other marchers on the bus and customers bussing tables when the small restaurants along the route were overwhelmed once the day's activities ended. It was in all honesty, one of the most memorable days of my life.

Dear Reader, this year I allowed the beginning of a head cold, the light rain, and the last year's political nightmare to dissuade me from getting on the bus. I'm not proud of this. Later, I realized if I had made plans with a group of friends (who were meeting up before the march) it would have catapulted me out of my funk --- so I will remember that for next year.

Instead, I told myself I had to make really good use of the day --- beyond grading papers and doing laundry (both of which I am now behind on). I worked on poems, sent out a packet of poems for submission, and then I wrote a letter to someone whom I had been wanting to write for over a year. Something about the day gave me that "now or never" push to ask for what I really want from this world. And even if my letter remains unanswered, or isn't answered as I hope for, I've done the hard work of putting into the universe what I want. Please wish me luck and I promise to report back.

In the meantime here is a poem by the poet who has most inspired me to write and to live well.
Planetarium
   Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750—1848)astronomer, sister of William; and others.   A woman in the shape of a monster     a monster in the shape of a woman     the skies are full of them
  a woman      ‘in the snow  among the Clocks and instruments     or measuring the ground with poles’
  in her 98 years to discover     8 comets
  she whom the moon ruled     like us  levitating into the night sky     riding the polished lenses
  Galaxies of women, there  doing penance for impetuousness     ribs chilled     in those spaces    of the mind
  An eye,
          ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’          from the mad webs of Uranusborg
                                                            encountering the NOVA   
  every impulse of light exploding
  from the core  as life flies out of us
             Tycho whispering at last             ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’
  What we see, we see   
  and seeing is changing
to continue reading this poem by Adrienne Rich