Come to the Well of Remembrance
Here have women sacrificed the memories that overflow
In both mourning and joy
In all times and places.
Now it is your turn to pour into it your libations—
A grandmother’s feathery hair
A daughter’s pink-painted toenails
Fierce years of labor wasted and
Angry seconds of agony pain.
The Well is constructed of millennia of
Hands held around sacred groves, quilting bees,
birthing stools, and teal Formica kitchen tables.
It can hold all you offer to it.
Now it is your turn to take from it what you need—
All the water that has flowed from women’s
Eyes, mouths, wombs
Has saturated to the Earth’s bones,
Has seethed next to our planet’s molten core,
Has evaporated and risen, then fallen again into
Your cupped hands as cool rain.
Taste one tear from each of your ancestresses.
It is their wish that you drink deeply and
be as mighty as all their memories
distilled into one swallow.
[Author’s Note: This poem was first published in The We’Moon Calendar, 2004.