Her Head Is Full of Poems

At the Threshold

Our great grandmothers separated grain from plant,
tossing it up and down in fine handwoven baskets.

It was these women who removed the chaff, the part
that does not nourish, and placed it on the dirt floor.

It was they who marked the portal with a stone to
keep the chaff from being carelessly tracked inside.

We, their descendants, paused to create the intensity
required to let our work to begin— a pivot point, a dawn

Where transformation can happen unlike our times, but
the moment when the threshold was a cold pavement.

In front of City Hall, we gathered outdoors together
to march, organize, choreograph our sea change of

Waving women. Our mothers told us Winston Churchill
said, “When you are going through hell, keep on going.”

A wind had swept through North America. Many legs,
feet cramped, sweaty, for a period out of time.

Women took to the workplace and sensed the mounting
impatience of friends, family, neighbors— interminably

Fidgeting zigzagging, sighing, pacing.Their grandmothers’
eyes focused, searching for homemade signs moving

Vertically in the hands of women in the front, indicating
the wiggling crowd would march gracefully as one. It felt

Incredibly difficult to be the threshold.Torsos bent forward,
as if standing forever at an invisible glass door,

Shifting their weight from one numb foot to another, their human needs trembling inside urged to do anything other

Than acknowledge the agony they found themselves in
at a portal hovering waiting, teetering, only to emerge into

The vast undulating sea of motion, of the unknown. The
itching desire to control, organize, dominate served no

Rational purpose. Yet, it did get them the vote.
On the other side of a new century, granddaughters

Would sway in the wind, finding the answer to stay
singularly in their limbs, seemingly apart, yet forever

Together. In that place, exactly, they would take a
lonesome stand at their homes on the threshold.

The spot where the young women could contribute—
the chaff blowing in the wind. The position where one

Could serve at the portal. Tight and crying at the
threshold another granddaughter worries about

What might happen. She is held back unhappy
by what ails her spirit. Once cardboard signs

Had swayed from side to side as well, up and down
in her mother’s war-torn place. A granddaughter

Crosses over another dimension of the threshold. She
relaxes and her steps lengthen fluidly— she becomes

Part of something greater than herself. So the threshold,
she faces daily, is this— terror of ego death, certain

Abandonment of authority, sense of disintegration
of her lesser self. Still, there is the momentum

These times require. And like her forebears, she
winnows out what is no longer needed and retains

All that is significant and true, wasting not a single grain—
this food needed to give birth to a movement for the ages.

Stones at the threshold— tenderly placed. All the
granddaughters step over the threshold

Together, dancing, singing in the wind, blowing
the lyrics and steps in the climate of love.

Let it begin.