Questions of Enough

by Julene Tripp Weaver

—after Nuala Archer, From a Mobile Home

How important may a woman become

begs the question, to whom? What values 

has male dominion denied? Lost vistas 

trapped in the dense woods of male 

saplings, the favored seeds they drop.

And, how powerful may a woman grow

demands the query, what authority has she 

available to wield? Each profile she rises 

to fill, her mirror reflects binding expectation,

that stifle and silence her genus creation.

What living wealth may a woman feel?

A growing seed seeks fullness, 

stop this trimming to Bonsai perfection—

stymied growth, shear cut, metal to soft

flesh, such discipline imposed.

What words travel where—from her lips,

out her arm, through her hand, to the page, and into

which book, what audience, before her Cassandra

is guillotined to silence while her newfound joy 

is exposed to a world willing to ignore.

Questions to ask of being born female—

what cracks we make, our dandelion 

attempting flower.

* * * * *

Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist in Seattle; she worked in AIDS services for over 21 years. She has three poetry books, Truth Be Bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (Finishing Line Press, 2017), No Father Can Save Her (Plain View Press, 2011), and Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues (Finishing Line Press, 2007). She is widely published in journals and anthologies. Her poems can be found online at: Anti-Heroin Chic, Riverbabble, River & South Review, The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now; a creative nonfiction piece is published by Yellow Chair Press, In The Words of Women International 2016 Anthology. Find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.