Same Struggling Heart

By Catherine Masters

 

These hands are raw,

and by that I mean near arid.

They work hard for me

navigating this blistering world.

I like to think that these hands indicate

that I held life firmly

instead of letting it slip through my fingers.

And yet

 

I think about the Inuit women

and how they had to eat raw seal fat

to survive.

And I think about the Syrian women

who have to drink dirty water

so that they don’t become shells.

And I think about the Sioux women

Who would eat buffalo and wild, bitter berries

in harmony

before my ancestors came and forced them

to eat beef that suffered with a side of

warm Budweiser beer.

 

I think about the Saudi girls

traded as commodities to men eager

to use them up.

And I think about the Tibetan women

aching for their cool mountain protectors

as they lie exposed in an aching world.

And I think about American women of color

who have been mothers, poets, and teachers

throughout our country’s twisted history–

but who are continuously and systematically repaid

by weights on their shoulders and hearts,

attempting to teach them that they don’t know

how to stand tall.

 

And I look back at my delicate, papery hands

made dry by use in my ideal life,

and I look at my heart that has

suffered

and I feel the pain that runs like

arteries and veins throughout all women

connecting us all to the same struggling heart.

And I feel the depth of womanhood

being pulled from my belly,

and I see this dance of empathy being entangled

with the beat of my privileged ignorance.

 

And I wonder at what it means to be alive

as a human animal

on this small jewel suspended in the abyss

of an ever-expanding universe.

And I question who put this idea into my head

that the present lasts for only a moment

and not the entirety of a lifetime.

And I question who put this idea into my head

that love occupies my fragile frame

instead of the entirety of the cosmos.

 

Catherine currently lives at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Muir Beach, California where she also works as a garden apprentice. She spends her days meditating, tending to flowers, herbs, and fruit trees, bowing, walking in the perpetual mists, and listening to wise people. She currently has no future plans, and is slowly and surely coming to terms with that. She writes a blog about the gift and trial that is living at a Zen monastery as a 23-year-old girl in her blog at: zenatheism.blogspot.com