The Limping Goddess: She-Who-Survives by Pesha Joyce Gertler

(I did not write this, but I'm "feelin' it". It's by Pesha Joyce Gertler. I found it in the 2010 We'Moon Datebook I am reveiwing at work. I just had to share it with my fellow Goddesses.)

She limps into the room
bent with the cargo of rape, battering
single-parent mothering and bureaucratic neglect
if she is fat or gay or nonwhite or Jewish
the pains multiply;
she has carried them all.

Her lotus feet have trudged this planet
for aeons; torn tennis shoes tell
how far she's traveled. She hunches
against the winter wind, her second-hand
coat like a blanket she wraps around
her golden body. Occasionally, she flies
over buildings, lands on tree tops,
is mistaken for a fat bird.

And occasionally, she falls,
intensifying her limp. But make no mistake;
that golden skin was mined in the black earth,
her feet, though limping and calloused,
are the lotus feet of She-Who-Survives.
A broken yet shining forgotten deity
returning, and there are millions
like her, multi-colored, limping
Goddesses returning to lay down our cargo
and reclaim our own.
--Pesha Joyce Gertler 1983