Lucille Clifton, Soul-Food, Life-Affirming Poetry

I'll never forget the first poem I read by Lucille Clifton.  After reading it I wanted to buy a gallon of red paint and graffiti it all over the walls in towns everywhere for everyone to read:  It was this poem, "To My Last Period":

to my last period

By:  Lucille Clifton

well girl, goodbye,
after thirty-eight years.
thirty-eight years and you
never arrived
splendid in your red dress
without trouble for me
somewhere, somehow.
now it is done,
and i feel just like
the grandmothers who,
after the hussy has gone,
sit holding her photograph
and sighing, wasn't she
beautiful? wasn't she beautiful?


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And then I bought the awesome book shown above and discovered a feast of her poetry, words that feed my soul to this day and make me happy to be a female.  I read this one yesterday and it made me laugh out loud:

Hag Riding
By Lucille Clifton

why
is what i ask myself
maybe it is the afrikan in me
still trying to get home
after all these years
but when I wake to the heat of morning
galloping down the highway of my life
something hopeful rises in me
rises and runs me out into the road
and i lob my fierce thigh high
over the rump of the day and honey
i ride        i ride

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And when all of my girlfriends and I used to be bitching and moaning about our periods, I'd often pause, smile to myself and think of this powerful, life-affirming poem:

poem in praise of menstruation
By Lucille Clifton


if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon          if
there is a river
more faithful than this
returning each month
to the same delta          if there

is a river
braver than this
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain          if there is

a river
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel          if there is in

the universe such a river          if
there is some where water
more powerful than this wild
water
pray that it flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave

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If you listen to men and the advertisers of today, you'd think a woman's period was a curse, a thing to be destroyed, something evil and bad.  It is not so.  I have an old, out of print book entitled, "Her Blood is Gold" and it's an entire book in praise of women and menstruation throughout the ages.  I'm saving it for my granddaughter.  It is no curse, it is a river of life, a metaphor for all of life. 

Jesus's mother
Buddha's mother
Mohammad's mother
Confusius's mother
Lao-Tzu's mother
Ghandi's mother
Freud's mother
Whitman's mother
Your mother
My mother---
Without menstruation,
None of us would be here.  ~Marion

One of my best friends, Angie, once told me this monumental truth, something like this, "The reason men are always at war is because they do not bleed and therefore, have blood-lust.  We women bleed every month and get our fill of it."  And trust me on this girls, when it is gone, you will miss it.  I sometimes cry for the emptiness within me, for having let a male doctor talk me into a hysterectomy only a few years before I would have entered menopause.  If you're considering a hysterectomy, get a 2nd and 3rd opinion, then do your own research.  I miss my uterus, the part of me which held and nurtured my 2 babies close for eighteen magnificent months...  And guess what?  Ms. Clifton has a poem for that too:

poem to my uterus
By Lucille Clifton

you uterus
you have been patient
as a sock
while i have slippered into you
my dead and living children
now
they want to cut you out
stocking i will not need
where i am going
where am i going
old girl
without you
uterus
my bloody print
my estrogen kitchen
my black bag of desire
where can i go
barefoot
without you
where can you go
without me

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So, if you're looking for a book of poetry that celebrates every aspect of being a woman, I'd highly recommend Ms. Clifton's books.  "Blessing the Boats" has new and selected poems from 1988 to 2000.  Her poetry feeds your spirit and makes you proud to be a grrrrrlllll! Celebrate your womanhood this week!

Love & Blessings,

~Marion~