Rise up and Know. {poetry}
{Photo credit: Heidi Fettig Parton}
On January 21, 2017, I took part in the Women’s March. Much-needed hope rose up within me while standing shoulder to shoulder with the women (and men) around me.
Marching together, we lifted each other up. Marching together, we validated the deeper knowing we’ve all been feeling. Marching together, we collectively agreed, “No, this is not normal.” In my own life, I’ve learned to listen to (and for) my intuition.
If I had followed my early intuitive knowing during my late twenties, I might have avoided being the victim of a rape (which is not, in any way, saying that I was to blame). In my thirties, I sensed that I was in a dangerous situation and managed to escape. Our collective intuition is now telling us that the situation unfolding around us is not right, even dangerous.
As democracy demands, we have peacefully passed the leadership baton. We cannot undo the election. Here’s what we can do: we can stay informed (reading reliable news sources), we can take our place in the emerging multitude of active, engaged, aware citizens, we can make sure we ‘know’.
Rise up and Know
“As as result of your ‘not knowing’, this country has lost its freedom, lost it for centuries, perhaps…” ~ Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Heart entwining chest wall, I made
my stumbling way up tired stairs
to a comfortless, sleepless bed, where
dreams flatlined on the night of the election.
I didn’t yet completely know that it was true,
but my inner knowing sucked at grief’s tendrils.
I’d seen all that unpleasant vitriol and chest
thumping in my life before; it was not unfamiliar.
Once again, the boys had been given a free pass,
to snap the girls’ bras at recess and
I could see how it might be
when the level-headed principal
was dismissed, allowing these peerless peers
to run the school themselves — a four-year
Lord of the Flies experiment. Man-child
demagogue firmly in place,
I can no longer escape memories of the rape
in my twenties, of a face-reddening crotch grab
when I faced my locker at age thirteen,
of the employer who said, “That’s what I get,
for hiring a woman,” he said that in 1998.
How proudly I wore my pantsuit on Election Day in solidarity
with my tribe — the one that would be electing Her.
No matter how little or much we’d done to get her elected,
we were certain that together we’d usher in a new matriarchy —
the headlines would read Madame President.
Now, our shared loss shows us how to
hold the others’ hands as we head out to the
unsupervised playground with the mean boys wielding
a self-proclaimed mandate for violence.
We grieve. But we will not stay down.
We will march together on this new front,
rising strong in a call to action, this our
mandate: To know and bear witness to
each crumpling little chink
to each fantastic tear
to each assault on a sister or brother
in this fading, still precious, democracy.
***
Heidi Fettig Parton is a mother of three who embraces career variety; she’s been a lawyer, a legal publisher, and a Yoga instructor. In recent years, she’s turned her focus towards writing, and anticipates receiving her MFA from Bay Path University’s Creative Nonfiction program in May 2017. She’s written for St. Croix 360, Angels Flight, literary west (AFLW), Elephant Journal, and mindbodygreen. This spring, she’s interning at Agate magazine. In her free time, Heidi enjoys reading, hiking, cross-country skiing, and taking photos of the beauty that surrounds her. You can find more of her writing at her website.
***
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