Invocation To Girlhood

                        for my women friends

                        by Sigrid Bergie Feliciano

Let us be girls, very small;

a bit lost in a forest of bushes,

dazzled by sky

and butterfly wings muffling our faces.

On a park bench,

mild-looking boys are reading comic strips

and trading baseball cards.

They cannot see us moving in shade,

our laughter caught in careless singing of birds.

We are boisterous, secretive, and gentle

in a way females know.

We find strange happiness in dancing

the language of friendship.

Let us return to the little thicket

as women with smooth breasts

and hands weathered by much life.

Let us drift together in the late sunshine,

feeling not languorous or sentimental,

but breathing the womb love of our mothers.

We are earthy in afternoon light,

so let us risk enchantment

and be foolish in the forest’s heart.

* * * * *

Sigrid Bergie Feliciano is award-winning author of Turning Out The Lights (New Rivers Press). COMPAS poet in the schools for 20 years. International winner Naji Naaman Literary Prizes 2019. Her poems in journals, anthologies across the US and beyond. Caregiver for her beloved parents in their last years. Social activist. Globetrotter. Lives with ancient oak and pine, coyote and mule deer, and husband Tony in Shadow Hills, California.