‘When a woman feels alone, when the room <br />is full of daemons,” the Nootka tribe <br />Tells us, ‘The Old Woman will be there.” <br />She has come to me over three thousand miles <br />And what does she have to tell me, troubled <br />“by phantoms in the night”? <br />Is she really here? <br />What is the saving word from so deep in the past. <br />From as deep as the ancient root of the redwood, <br />From as deep as the primal bed of the ocean, <br />From as deep as a woman’s heart sprung open <br />Again through a hard birth or a hard death? <br />Here under the shock of love, I am open <br />To you, Primal spirit, one with rock and wave, <br />One with survivors of flood and fire, <br />Who have rebuilt their homes a million times, <br />Who have lost their children and borne them again. <br />The words I hear are strength, laughter, endurance. <br />Old Woman I meet you deep inside myself. <br />There in the rootbed of fertility, <br />World without end, as the legend tells it. <br />Under the words you are my silence.<br /><br />May Sarton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/when-a-woman-feels-alone/
