Lifting the Voices of Women

In Praise of Women Divers

This is for the woman who took her children 
to the Red Sea to paddle through water their father
had never touched, though he grew up beside it
every day looking into its face.

This is for the woman who became a divemaster
though told it was dangerous and she’d be seen
in a wetsuit, how she led other women underwater
though it was illegal, teaching them the ways of fish,
discovering together another world, finding 
every day is a good day to dive.

This is for the women who wore abayas
atop their wetsuits as if they were merely
onlookers while meeting the Coast Guard,
and the men on the boat the only divers.

This is for the friend who stood on the boat deck
wearing her snorkel and mask, black robe
flapping with wind, smilingly determined to explore
what lay beneath the sea’s sun-smoothed surface— 
all of us others planning to join her. 

This is for the women who broke the law 
by choosing to dive, who probed shipwrecks 
and gazed at their gaps, who entered through holes
blasted into steel holds—how vessels once so strong
no water could enter, are now broken open, sunken,
propellers forever halted, going nowhere.

This is in celebration of the women who saw wrecks
in water clear as windows, the happiness engendered when
something so big, so seemingly sturdy, in its destruction
became a place of beauty decorated with soft corals, animated
with angel and broom-tailed filefish sweeping through.

It’s Women’s History Month. I will be reading with authors, Jean Gordon Kocienda, and Pamela Reitman and Elaine Rock, lifting the voices of women from cultures across the world, celebrating them with readings of poetry, nonfiction, and story.

Come share a meal March 26 at 5:00 pm at the Aqus Cafe in Petaluma, Sonoma County, CA and listen to a few stories of some amazing women.

Seating is limited. RSVP is required: see: https://aqus.com/communitydinnerRSVP/

Hope to see you you there!