Thursday, May 2, 2013

The woman who wasn’t afraid


(For Cecilia Vincent)



She wasn’t afraid of angina.
She wasn’t afraid of the buzz-saw
carving through her ribs:
just fix it, she said.


She wasn’t afraid of lazy brain:
give me a jigsaw, she said.
She wasn’t afraid of loneliness:
just love me, she said.


While everyone else
was fixing and giving and loving
she dragged her life from under the bed
and made it dance again.


— Rachel McAlpine, 29 July 2006


Image: poster of Rosie the Riveter, Wikimedia, Creative Commons licence.

3 comments:

  1. What a nice poem to finish the evening with! Love the poster too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Depicts what human courage can achieve!

    ReplyDelete