By Tess Gallagher
Although the general imaginative capacity
might seem to have been plundered by a man
having set foot on the moon, poets decided,
without deciding, to just keep dropping it
into their poems as if nothing much had
happened. They let it shine down on lovers
as an ancient power and, in the bedtime stories
of children, you still had to say goodnight
to it. My part Cherokee mother was alive
at the time this man-step took
place. I remember her black hair falling
to her waist like a horse-hair shawl when
she took it in: “So a man walked on the moon,”
she said. “They have been walking on women
for years and haven’t discovered them. I
think the moon is safe.” She could be severe,
like someone who would leave you to die
on the mountain when your time came. “The moon
carried your great-grandmother out of a river once
when it flooded her bed in the night,” she said.
“She climbed on its back and it floated her
to shore.” Then my mother went back to her
astonishment that while men could walk on the moon
they continued to walk on women, years into
years, moons into moons, without realizing
step into step, they were on sacred
soil, the far off flesh of their birth into death into
birth mothers. We sat silent together
trying to take in such ignorance and star-fall.
Soon it was time for breakfast. The moon
had forgotten us altogether. I shook out some
Cheerios into our bowls, those dependable moons
with holes in the middle that miraculously
float in milk. We took up our spoons
like two planetary insurgents, women
brave enough, every day, for the journey.
The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process
Without support for the arts and humanities we would simply not have the means to restore ourselves inwardly, nor have ways to lift our spirits in times of turmoil and ravaging by natural and human made disasters. Art allows us the many ways to minister to the unseen and insidious woes that afflict our ongoing lives across ethnic,
sexual and religious differences.
What was the inspiration for your creative work?
Watching my mother withstand the difficult life she had as a part native American woman.
Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t wish to lose. What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation?
I have a private deer preserve where the injured deer and the does with fawns, and indeed the bucks in the Fall come for refuge onto two properties I have that adjoin each other. This is very precious to me to provide as nothing is done for these animals which are wild yet also live with us now and among us.
