The World Rightsize Up
by Kate O’Kula, Bissel Cove, May 12, 2017.
For the Women’s Project Rally, State House, Providence, RI, May 13, 2017
In my head are images of the day
we took the streets in Washington,
New York, Chicago. Took a tundra in Antarctica
standing together then as we do here today
in front of this state house,
in Providence, Rhode Island.
Even now I feel the power of who we are
rumbling through us like a volcano
erupting into torrid night air.
There is no reversing that lava, hot and exacting,
back into the volcano; no one turns back that clock.
When the earth’s plates grind and move
and crack new fissures into the land,
we can’t even think of restoring the same old domain.
We’ve come too far to believe we have no power.
We feel electric sizzle in the air around us
when we gather to stand for what we know to be ours by right;
to conspire to return sanity to this co-opted government.
We could go off the grid, we have that much power.
We sound out defiance at those who are hustling,
dismantling our government,
those proverbial good old boys,
the white billionaires’ club
basking in the New York Times photo ops,
wearing thousand dollar suits,
grinning and joking as an amateur president
elaborates his signature, his foot square on the
wombs of women in Texas, Arkansa, Rhode Island.
We are bread rising in the heat of controversy,
provisioning for the long haul —
We are re-genesis for the planet and we are
aurora borealis when we stand together.
Yes, we have that much beauty and, oh what power.
And from Sister Sojourner Truth,
as though she were standing right beside me, here,
whispering over my shoulder:
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it rightsize up again.
