WHY I WRITE

I write to explore.

Like a road that wanders

to where I do not know.


In this earthly shell of one body

lies the flitting thoughts of many other potential roads.

The knowing that all our lives

could/would/did take certain paths

but what if?


What if a different choice had been made in a different moment?

Where would that path have lead?

Who would I have been?

Or what about living in a different time?

On a different continent?

What about trying to survive in a world

that made no sense at all?

How would I have lived and navigated then?


Crossing the west in a covered wagon,

being a geisha with porcelain Asian features,

or a young woman in Auschwitz during WW 2

What would have been the motives, the hopes, the choices?

Those worlds all contained plots and the characters that imbibed them.


Writing brings them out of the shrouds of time

cancels the mystery of distance

so they can climb right off the page

live out the words you write for them.

Making choices both heroic and not.

Being superbly human all unfolds

if you let it.


The tumbling kaleidoscope
of thoughts and patterns
translating into words
lets a writer explore
as many potential worlds
as Livingstone or Maro Polo
could have only dreamed of roaming.


While I am gently tethered to this earth with a physical body
the mind knows no such constraints
can move across culture and borders
and transcend even time itself.

In the crafting of words both delicate and heavy
emerges entire worlds e
equally as rich as the physical moment of now.

Think of your favorite character from a novel
and how meeting that character within the pages of a book transformed you.
Added dimension to how you viewed your own world.

You can be assured it transformed the writer who thought of it also.

It is in this glorious quest

for exploration and transformation

that I write

I AM THAT WOMAN

The one you overlook at first glance

Who appears world weary and drab

or

who seems to have a glint in her eye that makes you look twice

The one with veiled questions in her gaze that must be answered

Yes I am the sum of them all

I am that woman



My heart beats

My lungs sing with the new day

and my heart is alive

ALIVE

do you hear me?



I create your beloved home

The food that you eat

The child that you cherish



I am woman

As essential to life as sunshine to the earth

Do not count my voice as absent

as I am your wife, mother, sister, friend,

grandmother

and a million other wombs

all carrying the drumbeat of your male warrior hearts



Listen to me

I speak in the rain beating on your roof

The liquid falling silver of a full moon

and the promise of each new day



I am the one you hold in your arms at night

I am in your identity

guardian of hearth and of future



Do not pass by me in a hurried rush

Stop.

Hush!

Listen...