Cathedral

A Poem About De~ri~sion

Who might she have been

were it not for the

woven patterns of iniquity

tucked in a hymnal

she’d never opened before

Who might she have loved

if the billows of crowded pews

hadn’t scorned and mocked

her innocence and wisdom

What might she have birthed

if the steeple wasn’t reduced

to a fond farewell rapture

What might she have written

if her ideas weren’t disregarded

like dust on a tattered floor

Who might she have heard

if baited breath

was louder than the Lord’s prayer

What might she have said

if she had a voice

that wasn’t heavy and laden

Who might she have saved

if she knew

that peace really lives in the valley

Who might she have been

if the glass wasn’t stained from the inside out

July 9–10, 2020

This poem is dedicated to every woman who has ever been cast away, disregarded and shamed by the hypocrisy of judge and jury steeped in traditions that have no authority or dominion over us. Those unpublished rules sometimes limit our ability to set the world on fire.

My grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday on August 6, 2020. She is a kind, gentle, strong, and high-spirited woman despite facing some hard blows in life. She birthed a soul that matches hers in my mother. I appreciate who my grandmother is and still I wonder who she might have been if the arrows of life hadn’t struck her body and mind. She didn’t grow up with the freedom to be freely free to speak her truth and chart her own course the way I have. I am highly impressed by the way she’s still managed to navigate within the gates she was born into with such grace, class, beauty, and angelic impact. I wonder who she would have been if she were me, and I were her? I choose to be her voice daily and speak the truths that I believe she would unleash if she weren’t a victim of time’s archaic ways. I choose to use this poem to keep the embers burning and be the woman that she might have been.

I ask you, ‘Who might you have been if the if’s hadn’t prevailed?’