A woman’s story (Part 1)

“Her absence became her presence”  When Women Were Birds: Terry Tempest Williams

The pages of history are littered

with men telling the stories

of women they barely knew

far less understood

They fill in the blanks

and rub out the mystery

and concoct a fiction

they may earnestly believe

but that bears little semblance of truth.

Scripture too

bears all the marks

of redactors 

whose bodies could not know

the cycle of nature

the passion and beauty

the promise and the scars

the strength and sacrifice

the complexity

and compulsion

of womanly wiles

And it would be

much too dangerous

to give power

to the absence

in a similar way

that it was once purported

that pockets in a woman’s dress

would lead to sedition 

So the spaces

are not allowed to be

for fear they will grow

into a story untamed

beyond control 

of the raconteurs  

with agendas to be met

and pages to be filled.

And the stories

of absent women

are moulded

and chiselled

made safe

for the sharing.

Until a new generation emerges

to break open the moulds

and allow absence

to be presence

once more.