How (A Man’s World)

“It’s a man’s world,”
they say,

But someone still
Needs to teach
The little ones,
Gender irrelevant,
How to do,
To survive,
To get by,
When a “man” is gone,
Not present,
Never present,
Or passed on;
What of little girls never taught
To change a tire;
Or mow the lawn?
We teach her
To understand dependence,
Believe it,
Then rip off the illusion
With age;
Man, woman
Mortality is the great equalizer,
Teach the little ones, all:
How.

Goddess Emerged

Here I am,
Freer than I can remember being
In a long while,
All these fresh, glistening feelings
Settle in upon me:
Emotions, sensations,
needs, desires;
Things I’ve pushed away
For so long,
Too long
Aspects of being,
Delights of life that I have denied myself
Become now apparent glittering possibilities,
Present reminders
of my sensitive, seductive self;
Pieces I shuttered for safe keeping
For too long,
But never gone
Only held;
Rising, here and now
Transformed
Into a new manifestation;
a Goddess,
Refined with time and pressure
Ready too for her due from life,
In more than the hefty weight of the world,
But in the ripe exquisite beauty and pleasure of its bearings,
Forged and fiery,
with light of the sun she gleams,
A diamond emerged from the rough.