(A/N: written for a school competition...for international women's week)

Woman of the World

She's strong and frail

Black and white

Soft and stern

Mother of earth

---

her tears are for her eyes only

her struggles are for the world to see

an iron-hard will

borne of the suffering

---

of those who have gone before

And wept and fought as she

In a man's world

Where women fight to be seen

---

her hands are soft and coarse

her feet are delicate and rough

her face is smoot and scarred

her heart is always hard

---

Child of revolution

Bright hope of a generation -

the lone figure in the dark

whose plight cannot be known by many

---

For why would they let:

the fragile, the weak, the barefooted with kids

suffer so - torn in so many places

stretched in 2

---

between obligation to the world-to bear

and obligation to the life she brought into the world - to work

She slaves not by choice and yet not by force

Whether it be a pen in hand or an apron around her waist

---

Watch her slog her way through life

Cause in hand, and a knife

upon which her tongue is sharpened

As defense against the winds of fate

---

Which often threaten to topple her

By squeezing torrents of tears from too-dry eyes

And exposing softness-the weakness-

behind the heart-barrier

---

the men - the wrong and the wronged -

who have been shredded by her wounding words

and unmanned by her firestorms and floods

Should learn to respect her - but not fear her

---

Never fear her

But rather fear for her

Kira-Reen

28 apr'06