RITES OF PASSAGE

by Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard

Positions call out to us as if there were

ladders in our daily lives, and to reach

the upper rungs often means

listening to a person in order to use

her thoughts, but the thoughts keep rising

in that person like a spring

in the midst of a meadow. This is one

of the constant stories of our lives,

either to become prominent

and celebrated, or to turn away

from ladders to see roses

blooming on fences, how miniature

wild flowers rise from the cracks

of an asphalt road, to listen to the water

cascading over centuries

of serrated rocks that place us

in the center of creation, a monarch butterfly

alighting on a blade of grass,

for in the vast expanse

of the universe, enmity pales

and we are all just blades of grass.

* * * * *

Marguerite Guzmán  Bouvard is the author of 9 poetry books two of which have won awards, as well as a number of non-fiction books on women and human rights, (Revolutionizing Motherhood; the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) human rights, social justice, illness and grief. She is a former professor of Political Science and Poetry, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Studies Program Brandeis U.