Because I'm in the Mood

My best friend is a huge fan of Audre Lorde and well, friends are supposed to put you on to new things :-p So blog world, I share this poem with you and add some commentary at the end...


Stations by Audre Lorde

Some women love to wait for life
for a ring in the June light
for a touch of the sun to heal them
for another woman's voice
to make them whole
to untie their hands
put words in their mouths
form to the passages
sound to their screams
for some other sleeper to remember
their future
their past.

Some women wait for their right train
in the wrong station
in the alleys of morning
for the noon to holler
the night come down.

Some women wait for love
to rise up
the child of their promise
to gather from earth
what they do not plant
to claim pain for labor
to become
the tip of an arrow
to aim at the heart of now
but it never stays.

Some women wait for visions
that do not return
where they were not welcomed
naked
for invitations to places
they always wanted to visit
to be repeated.

Some women wait for themselves
around the next corner
and call the empty spot peace
but the opposite of living
is only not living
and the stars do not care.

Some women wait for something to change
and nothing does change
so they change

There is so much that speaks to me in this poem that it's actually difficult to start. I think about the last 3 lines-"Some women wait for something to change and nothing does change so they change" and it's odd to me that one can interpret them in 2 different ways, both accurate & fitting.

On the one hand, a person can only sit waiting for something to be different before they DECIDE to be different. A woman walks away from a loveless marriage, Mom goes back to school after years of home making, the Social Worker changes careers, or the real estate agent just decides to travel because she can. Their lives WILL be different because they choose it to be. On the other hand, sometimes a person can get so stifled by the stagnancy of their lives that they adapt and stop wanting things to be different just so they can have peace. Perhaps that's the woman who stops wanting more from her partner, the woman who never does anything that doesn't revolve around her family & children, the woman who can't make a decision her Church doesn't agree with, or the woman who stays at her job because it's stable. I'm both of these women at different times and I suppose that's how life goes.