Not a Rock

They've brought me here, to the Spirit Speaker
They say I have evil in me...
I'm wrong...warped...damaged goods--
This is not a woman's archetype.
I do not fit the mold--that they've created

I am drawn very much against my will
through the curtains of hide...
I steal a long glance at my surroundings:
The concerned faces of our tribe
glare at me with disapproval.

The verdure encircling our home
is my home--not here, flattened under the oppressive palm
of my father, my mother,
my future husband, chosen for me
not by me

I long for freedom.

I loathe being restrained...forced by old, worked hands
into that shape, that mold that they've created--
a clay pot they stubbornly continue to rework...
it keeps sagging or its too stiff...
They don't want to see
that I cannot be that clay pot

I run with the wolves.

I am pushed into the hut.
The Spirit Speaker sits upon the earth--
bowls, and beads, and herbs surround her.
Long silver hair frames her down-turned face.

"So you are the wild one they cannot tame." It is not a question.
She goes back to her humming.
Slowly, her head comes up. Her face is weathered and leathery
Her bright eyes open and she abruptly stops humming.

She holds out her hands and a smooth river stone
sits peacefully in their wrinkled cup. She is offering it to me.
I reach out and she lowers the stone into mine.
Her hands encase my own.

"This rock knows its purpose and nature. The river runs over it...
smoothing it and it remains in its niche or sometimes
is carried with the current to the next niche,
to be rubbed away at a little more..." She is quiet, eyes closed again.

"Am I to be like this rock?" I ask her, anger flooding through me
and she immediately turns those bright silver eyes back on me.

"No, foolish girl." Something about being in here
with her, and these words, settles a blanket of peace
around my writhing spirit. "You are not a rock.

"You know you're nature. Now run with it."