not in a day but
always, the way 
a cat is also a
kitten until
the day it dies.

When the writing 
on the men’s-room
walls forgets
the female beyond
the forcing and filling
of apertures,
I am a woman.

Spirits smashed
and picked out in
the back of taxi cabs,
bodies to the highest bidder,
femurs spread stirrup fashion
on a cold steel table for insides 
to be read as if the answers to
your questions might be discovered
by an examining room strobe.

I’ve survived the men’s wars 
and the being torn
apart, outside 
and in,
and still wish to make something:
a meeting place where 
we all can dance,
like here, in this poem.
I am a woman
fireproof, seduced
by no one but the
waves and moon.

On an Autumn day admire
the disarray of a garden grown wild:
once a formal circle of roses
and crew cut grass now gone
long and bushy, a mad man’s mane
spotted with nosegays of wild flowers.
Soldier rows of hedges are invaded
by clematis and crimson ivy, yet
I’ve no heart for taming.
Such unruliness matches my soul,
and so does, on this first frost morning,
one white rose growing
among
the
weeds.