Calling All Women by Ruby Dee

Ruby Dee is one of the most prolific and influential women of the past 100 years. She broke many molds as an African-American actress in Harlem when she started performing in the early 40′s and, with her late husband, the equally magnetic Ozzy Davis, made incredible strides in the American Civil Rights movement alongside both Dr. King and Malcolm X. She is an incredible poet as well. I saw her perform the following poem on the Sundance channel’s “Iconoclasts”(a show I highly recommend), and sought it out to post. Enjoy!

Calling All Women

Calling all sisters. Calling all

Righteous sisters.

Calling all women. To steal away

To our secret place. Have a meeting

Face to face. Look at the facts

And determine our pace. Calling all

Women.

We want to reach – first and second

And

Third world women

Come together!

Women in and outside the power structure –

Working women,

Welfare women,

Women who feel alienated and isolated

Women who are all frustrated

Women who have given up – women – women

Questioning women – women

Unpolarized and unorganized.

Ostracized. Tired of being penalized

Come help us start to bridge the gaps

Racial, cultural, or generation

We want some action and veneration.

These men, these men they

Just ain’t doing it.

They’ve had hundreds of years

Now they ’bout to ruin it.

Kitchen, office, ex-prison women

Old and young and middle-aged women

Make this scene

Oh yes, and bring your lunch!

Problems, problems common problems

That we make and cause each other

Sister, daughter, old grandmother

Female child you can bring your little brother

Take the subway, grad a cab

Saddle your mule

Bike it, limo

Take a choo-choo, fly

Or pick ‘em up and lay ‘em down.

Socialism, capitalism, communism

Feminism, womanism, lesbianism

Here-and-now or futurism

We just can’t afford a schism

We got to get together or die.

Now is the time for an evolution

Let’s all search and find a solution

For how we’ll make it to the next revolution

Or die.
Oh yes. And don’t forget your lunch!

From the 1987 book by Ruby Dee, My One Good Nerve

For Fiona

There is something about the way
You look strangers in the eyes
And shout “Hello, how are you?”
That has me so enchanted.

Even if I was blessed with huge, hazel eyes
And a charming, toothy pirate’s smile,
I still don’t think I could find the courage
To engage the world so freely.

You have no time for nonsense from me.
I try to keep up as you pull me out of myself
And out into strange, new places
Where we greet all we meet with shameless joy.

Step by step, I open up a little bit more
To the possibility of letting myself go.
To becoming the explorer I always thought I was
Until you showed me otherwise.

I want to learn your life language.
I want to run with abandon,
And sing songs to strangers,
And dare to shout “No!” and hug hard.

Inside the whirlwind that is you
Lives an infinitely better me.
And inside of me is all the hope and love
A Mother’s heart could ever hold.

An Interpretation

You are here again
At the ancestral well;
Scooping the cool, sweet liquid
Into new hands held by old ghosts.

As roots push through you
And take hold of the earth,
You become soil and sunlight,
And the soil and sun begin to breathe.

The stories etched in the worn flagstone floor
And proud, but crumbling grave markers
Blow in to you on a knowing wind,
As though they’ve been waiting for your return.

As the still air shifts,
You can hear the whispers of an ancient past;
As it settles back in,
You can’t deny the echoes of your future.

The roots plunge deeper still,
Twining tightly beneath the storied soil.
The message has been well received-

You are home.

For Chris

Today I want to pray
Too bad I don’t know how.
When I hear the reading of the names
I want to lift them up
But to where?
To where?

If only I could feel
The spirit move through me.
If I could grasp the pillars
And shout and wail;
Beat my chest and ask my God,
“Why have you forsaken me?”

But that idea of a God and I
Parted ways so long ago.
In that stand still time on tower and plane
My God was torn flesh and steel;
Rising and falling with angels and demons,
Becoming nothing but broken burning echoes

And in that same stop motion shard of eternity
My aching God showed up in countless ways
With humble hearts and work worn hands
To start the unfathomable journey towards healing
Anchored by a chain of souls, My God goes forth
Into the dark fog of humanity with an infinite radiance

I cannot pray for you a place in Heaven
Where a knowing Lord bestows truth and grace.
I can only call your name back to the quivering web
That wraps her silken fingers around the bosom of the Earth
Here you can touch the pulse of a watchful world
That loves you in ways that God only knows

Nothing Fades (for A.J.) – 9/2005

There are smiles that rearrange the air

So that our very breathing is altered.

And just as we are made of

The same stars that formed the universe;

We are part of every smile

That has graced our tiny lives.

Nothing fades, nothing fades.

The smile is born of love.

Profound love that asks only

That we are present, sincere, and ever open

To the transformative joy of surrender.

And if the night tries to claim the smile

We know that she will fail.

For the keepers of the smile are stronger

Than the fates that rear their heads.

There are beautiful people that held the smile

Through times good and bad.

Beautiful people that encouraged the smile,

Became the smile, understood the smile.

There are beautiful people

that will forever hold the smile so close

You would have to alter their very being

In order to take the smile away.

Nothing fades, nothing fades.