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Life and Work

Tides

There is a tide in the affairs of women, too.
It swirls around your ankles when you are a girl,
Teasing your toes,
tugging you gently down the brown and running river,
patched with sunlight and broken with rocks
making your feet unsteady, cool and welcoming.

When you are a woman the water runs deep and fast,
swirling with bends and drops and mill races,
with the heads of your partner and your children bobbing around you,
you try not to drown,
not to let them drown,
try to stop and breathe for a second before the white water rafts you away,
and on you shoot.

Then the river widens; the water becomes placid;
suddenly you float;
you look around you, and all the bobbing heads are gone;
racing down other streams.

You paddle this one alone.

This is the time when you don’t need to take anything at the flood;
You have your fortune; your children; your completed life.

Why then, can I not resist the pull of the open ocean ?

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