women – Anna Citrino—Poetry, Place, Pilgrimage

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!

I hope you can join me to hear women’s stories through the voices of these writers in March. If you have a problem with the above link, try using this

And a poem from Stories We Didn’t Tell

MY MOTHER’S HANDS

Chugwater, Wyoming, 1923
Adella, age 66

Fingers curled, knuckles swollen with arthritis,
her head encircled by lamplight, I see my mother
bent over her hands, embroidering flowers
on tablecloths, then rubbing at the pain,
though there was little she had to relieve
the aching tenderness that came
from work she did all day
for years
as she milked and mended,
hauled water, and lugged hay.

Despite the hurt, she kept her hands moving,
shaping and reshaping her world, not deterred
by the pain, handing on what she could to me.

When young, I didn’t comprehend her aches—
how age alters a woman. Old now, I notice joints
that ache when moved, the hidden places
worn enough for tenderness to emerge.

When Jasper died, the life I lived died too.
Married now to Joel, a blacksmith, I’ve entered
a different world. Things break, and Joel
remakes and fixes them. Taking damaged saws
and wagon wheels, worn out horseshoes,
ruined tools, he heats the metal from dark carnelian
to opal white, and then strikes the steel over
and over, sparks flying as he reshapes
with his hammer. Form renewed,
he quenches it with water.
Restoration can be brutal.

I’m not a blacksmith but know something
about hammers. I’ve given birth nine times,
had two children and a husband die, known drought,
hunger and ongoing uncertainty—so many
unanticipated ways things wear down
before they fall apart.

It’s true, Joel drinks. Some may say that’s a fault,
but I’ve given him my hand in marriage, worn as it is.
He knows about broken things and tenderness.

Hearts and habits stiff as iron can be melted, renewed
when there’s someone who knows how to mend them.

Tag: women

Lifting the Voices of Women

Celebrating Women’s Voices