Dance of the Woman

What does being a woman mean? What does being a man mean? I've been turning these questions over and over as the Jumping Bean gets older. What do I want him to know about "gender"?*

What happens when you start pondering "gender"?

From http://openclipart.org

Here's what happened when I did:

Dance of the Woman

Stepping between rain drops

The fertile come to bear

Whether under an antiseptic showerhead

Or a cloud-baked sky.

We will dance

When I lie forgotten in cooking steam

Swept away by a four bladed fan

Silenced in the clunk of autowash

Deafened by pull of a vacuum

Smiling as the screen sterilizes the children

We are still dancing

I am dancing to the drum

Of low-hanging breasts slapping and swinging

Dancing with my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother

Leaping, wobbling, jumping, swaying

Let loose in a circle of stone

We are dancing

I dance, my sweet boy,

To pull of your lips

The tingling rush of warmth in my breasts

As I feed you the juicy wilds

You know the dance of a woman and

You will dance

*Thank you to my teachers: Bob, Helen, John, and Dee for requesting I read Ivan Illich, Merlin Stone, and  Clarissa Pinkola Estes.