Rebecca Rogerson – Feminism and Religion

If I am The Mother* by Rebecca Rogerson

If I am The Mother

then I am holy. Made of moonbeams and shadows, darkness and light, questioned and answered, lost and retrieved;

discovered remains

If I am The Mother

then I am a reflection, a depiction, an inflexion of a cosmos in bliss and chaos, birth and destitution; a primordial sound unleashed to form planet, life, and

you and me

If I am The Mother

then I am fermented in humanity, and sour the illusions of precipices we’re told that

we cannot cross

Cross the trinity of three’s and return to

the magic of all

The Loving Tree By Janet Maika’i Rudolph

from Egyptian tomb of Pashedu *ca.* 1314-1200 BCE

Once there was a tree who loved two young children, twins, a boy and a girl.

Thay came everyday to play under her canopy.

Gather her leaves and play fairies of the forest.

Climb her trunk and play in her branches

And sleep with their backs against her trunk

They loved the tree and the tree loved them.

Time went by and the twins grew older.

They didn’t come to visit the tree as often.

One day when they did come, the tree asked them to play but they responded they needed money because they wanted to go on dates.

The tree responded, take my apples to sell. But leave enough behind for the squirrels and birds and other animals so they can eat too. Leave enough behind for the seeds.

Mountain Song on May Day by Sara Wright

I moved to the mountains to move mountains, to find peace in the hidden crevices of an endangered planet.
We pull out her hair, clumps at a time, self-harming her* in a myriad of new ways.
Wildfires burn up our forests, floods destroy precious lowlands. Loggers strip the possibility of new life from the soil. Our childhood stories become our adult lives: The Giving Tree who gave it all. . . .
The land doesn’t break; just dips and hides in private caves.
I moved to the mountains so that the predators of my past wouldn’t find me.
Their spirits crawl out from unvisited graves.

[Excerpted from the poem, Mountain Life by Rebecca Rogerson.

They slip past the disappearing forests of canopied evergreens that once shaded and protected Ki’s children. [Ki is short for Kin – more on what this word means in Part 3.]

Three poems by Rebecca Rogerson

Don’t Take Me to Church

He never let me eat communion because I wasn’t a catholic, but it was okay for me to eat his dick. My tiny palms forced to stroke him, the same dextrous hands that coloured in the lines.

I knew his God wasn’t my God. I knew she saw everything there was to see and that he wouldn’t reach salvation; no matter how many Hail Marys he said at mass in Ireland.

The Virgin Mary knew what he stole from me, what they steal from all of us.

I couldn’t fall apart on Sundays at noon when he took me to church—before he took me home after he did what he did—to the little Jewish girl who didn’t know she was Jewish.

I couldn’t remember it because I buried it in Survive, until, it was resurrected by nightmares and demons who professed caring and brought me to altars of despair to vomit up all the darkness, and when there was no more left to cleanse or tear out; light ripped in.

No one talks about the embarrassment that goes along with the telling, sharing and surfacing of sexual violence. How it comes up, how it comes back. How we’re always haunted by the deadbeat dead and grabby grandfathers who try to reach from there into here, pretending they are made of heaven.

I fled a friend’s choir concert because perpetrators keep stealing time, moments, sleep, joy, and friendship, in churches and baths. On my flight, I hunted for nature, soil and anything else that felt most alive in the hilly town of Nelson. Pretending I was like everyone else, I hid the panic that strikes broken hearts.

Two Poems by Rebecca Rogerson

ROSE WATER

I am the holy place somewhere in the stars of eternity,
someone’s daughter who seeks reprieve somewhere.

Yetta changed her name to Mary. She tried to erase her past, not as a Jew, well maybe some of that, but more as a Jew molested by her father—a frum[1], “Monster”, his daughters called him.

On my altar sits my tallit alongside a Menorah with seven brass holders. No stars of David—before or after the decimation of Gaza. Can rose water sweeten our hearts? We pour it graciously in our hands, hoping the lost petals heal our guts and brighten our thoughts. She searches hungrily for hope in glass bottles adorned with Farsi, that cost $4.29 each.