Oh Mayan
Oh Mayan Woman,
ankles washed by swirling river
while you beat the farm
out of your husband’s soiled pants.
Oh Mayan Woman,
as you scour your dishes, your children bathe,
pollywogs in early sun
before Catholic school.
The agouti your father hunts,
fresh meat shared,
you scrub the fat and blood
in the current of the Columbia.
Your short, stout mothers in pastel dresses
scrub on ageless flat rocks
in shallow river bends.
And turn to disrobe bare-breasted
and kick their heels, to dive
and wash their long black locks.
The river,
it runs so clear,
so quick in high rain,
so languid in the sweltering April days.
It is your soul, more than the soil.
Oh Mayan Woman,
what will you do
when they cut the trees,
and the water runs,
brown,
like your husband’s clothes, so soiled?
What will you do
when the flow is choked and
barely ebbs past the village
bend?
What will you do
When the primary wilds are entered
in logging force,
the axes of testosterone
power yielding
massacre?
Will you know the pain?
Will you see the rape
before it starts –
to hug the chests
and limbs of fellow forest?
To block the cut
before the wounds are
scarred throughout
your head
waters?
Or will the attack
be so silent,
and you so innocent –
that your forest maidenheads
will be ripped
before a scream can cry out
loud?
Oh Mayan Woman,
beware the wolves,
know of the foreign fangs
with your men,
and fight the insidious teeth of those
so far
removed.
Learn to hold those trees,
to guard against the tongues
that fork around your
quiet ways.
Wake up!
WAKE Up!
The trees they call you.
The waters cry your name
each night as you climb
the banks
with dishes clean,
your day
done,
their days,
unknown.
may 95
md
mare cromwell
–
Thanks to Carolyn Raffensberger for prompting me to put this poem up here. This comes out of spending a winter just up river from a Mayan village in the remote SW corner of Belize in 94-95. The Belizean government has secretly forged a deal with a logging company from Malaysia to log off large chunks of the rainforest farther upstream and it threatened to wreak havoc on the villagers entire way of life. I spent many hours hanging out with the women by the river, and it was their life blood.
To my knowledge the good news is that since that time the Belizean government had to back down and revoke the contract and the Mayan people have become far more politically astute on how to work as activists to prevent such clandestine agreements. Much of this is thanks to a group called “Ecologic“, which a friend of mine runs.
for the Earth,
m
moonmother
Mare Cromwell
