What If

What if a circle of wise ones appeared
in the dream of a crone who had dared risk her fear?
What if the womb of the source could give birth
to women whose power and art healed the earth?
What if a man were invited to share
in the process of artistry such a tribe dared,
their risks and their tears and their joys and their pains,
painted with courage in sacred domain?
He came, and he witnessed remarkable sights
as the medicine women created their rites
of passage, renewal and regeneration,
reliving the goddess's mythic creation.
A spiral they danced in the labyrinth of life,
each cut her soul open, a brush for a knife.
One showed the vortex of grief in her heart,
another the darkness of doubting her part.
One stood nonverbally sharing her hell
as only a rape-ravaged spirit could tell.
Another, her body bruised by such a fate
that proves beyond doubt the existence of hate,
cried tears of delight as she found her own soul
by painting the terror with pigment of gold.
And one woman crawled 'round the floor like a beast,
clawing for scraps of a once-promised feast-
a banquet at which every morsel of love
was consumed by a glutton who wore iron gloves.
Then one screamed while writhing and twisting in pain
at the image she'd painted of endless cold rain.
The man stood aback at the ghastly display
of the sins against hope all these women replayed.
Penises piercing and claws ripping flesh,
a skeleton laid like a babe in a creche,
mothers quite passive as fathers abused,
lovers with promises later recused,
angels of darkness held sway in the night
while demons and monsters smile broad with delight,
fiending destroyers determined to kill
all possible vestige of hope and of will.

Now what if that death's not what he witnessed there?
What if these paintings of tortured despair
brought freedom and courage and strength of resolve
to these warrior women whose tears soon dissolved?
What if their painting unshackled their joys
and the wise crone had known that paint was a ploy
to release all these women from their histories
so they, too, be wise as the moon's mysteries?
What if their triumph was what the man saw
and what if all men could then share in his awe?

George Herrick
PFTS Student and CO-Teacher