White Women Don’t Wear Ponytails

    (Photo: Cold Sunrise)

White Women Don’t Wear Ponytails

I want to be astonished

I want to be amazed

I want to stand at the edge of a cliff and yell out through my lungs almost half crazed.

I want to sail across the ocean.

I want to soar up in my balloon.

I want to play a guitar and a flute while I stand tranquil on the back side of the moon.

I want to sail as an eagle, over the mountains so high.

It’s a wonder what a good night’s sleep will do…I feel at least 10 foot high. 

I want to bridge any gaping holes

between countries or peoples or friends

I want to be like the Rock of Gibraltar

a person solid on whom people depend.

I want to make art and parties

and maybe marry the two

upon a yacht that I run ’round the Cape ’cross the Atlantic

and then on over (at last) to you…

Maybe up then to cold Alaskan waters…

and maybe down then and back again

trekking the globe like a traveler light

with a map and a compass and gin

I want to do all things today

happy and chocked full of life

and when I rest I will lay me down

as an Appalachian women-mother-wife.

I want to jet up through the sky

in an aero plane full of my friends

and then drop down through blankets of thermal warmed water

in scuba where I risk the bends

When I awoke this morning

my hair stood straight up near the top part of my head

from a tossin’ and a turnin’ all night in my dreams

as an undercover spy or as a teacher or as a heroine in a country foreign again

White women like me over 50 don’t wear ponytails

piled up high on the top of their heads

but today I’m gonna do my ballet turns in my sweats

with my hair pinned up high just the way I woke up with it in my bed.

[A sort of “Walter Mitty” I suppose I am  

of women throughout time

who dream dreams of misadventure

and seek their fortune, love and pleasure

in fancy made up games along the way

This I offer up-a hearty “salute”

to all of my secret sisters

who like me find themselves seeking

behind the curtain peeking

a glimpse...

of the secret life within.]