Happy Imbolc! The Women Are Moving

This is one of my favorite and most challenging times of the year.  Here on the coast of Maine, the snow is still fairly clean on the ground, but the air is biting and it seems like a long long time since the earth was alive.  And like many people I know, I’ve been struggling with fear and disbelief, with many of my own personal and political traumas deeply triggered by the new administration.

​​And yet there is the stirring.  This is the time of year when life does start to stir again under the snow, the time some witches call Imbolc, when the lambs quicken in their mothers’ wombs and the Goddess Brigid starts to warm up her cauldron of magick, healing, and inspiration. it’s the traditional time of year for eating seedcakes, remembering the hope inside us as well as outside. It’s the the time to make candles and light them, not only to remember the warmth building in the world, but also to experience the sweet centrality of our own life-force, our will.

Every time I’ve been together with a group of women since marching on Jan 21st, conversations about the Women’s Marches continue to unfold. These are not always easy conversations, but they are necessary.   The work many of us, women and men, are doing now to face our own internalized sexism, to acknowledge and perhaps begin to heal racial and class wounds among women, and to come to terms with our personal commitment to Pussy Power, Goddess energy, or whatever we choose to call it, is crucial.

Without these internal steps, we couldn’t grow the world that humanity needs to grow if we are to survive and sustain ourselves—a world that is female-centered (but not female-dominated, since matriarchal societies do not need to rely on domination to maintain themselves).

Marching in Augusta was a beautiful experience; one of my favorite moments was when a woman with no top stood up on top of a truck; some police tried to interfere with her, but they backed down at the chants from protesters: “Let her be! Let her be!”  It is perfectly legal for women to be topless in Maine, and the crowd was moved and inspired to see the law being upheld.

I plan to rally again in DC next week with the AWP writers conference, hopefully this time wearing a proper pussyhat that my daughter is kindly knitting for me.  Meanwhile, here’s a poem in tribute to the Women’s Marches, and to the wonderful poet Genevieve Taggard, written for a massive new protest poetry anthology just out from Dispatches Editions called Resist Much, Obey Little.   I hope Taggard would have enjoyed this Spell for the Women’s March.  And I‘d love to hear about your own march experiences and your thoughts on the current time. Please join me to continue the conversation in the comments below.  

Love,

Annie

THE WOMEN ARE MOVING AT LAST

“At last the women are moving”

—Genevieve Taggard

I awaken

In perfection.

All around me

Women are marching.

In our pink hats,

We are marching.

We are marching

In our despair.

With breasts bare,

We are marching.

In our own places

We march.

At last the women are moving.

For our lives and our planet, we move.

Out of our feelings and blessings,

Out of our urges and thoughts,

Out of our sensations, our knowledge, our anger,

And finally

In

Our righteousness

We march.

At last the women are moving!

At last the women are moving.

The women are moving at last.

We march outward.

Inward we march.

Towards each other we march.

Towards them, with them, and for them, also,

We march.

From the beauty of our mothers we march,

With our yonis we march.

With our freedom we march.

In our wisdom we march,

In our pain.

In our knowledge we march.

For our daughters we march.

For our lovers, our brothers and sons, we march.

In the power of the Goddess, we march.

We march on.

Out of everything ready, we march.

For ourselves in the future, we march.

In our sleep and

Our waking,

We march

(At last the women are moving),

March on.