Our mother’s garden

Welcome to the woman’s world
here we all share
the work & the bread
is broken among us.
You may sit as an equal
at our table,
not for you to cook & serve
then eat apart squatting with the servants.

Here the women are honoured. We serve
each other & we are well served.
Here we can eat & eat
no one tells us to starve ourselves
to look pretty.
Here no one forbids the fruit
of any tree, eating is not a crime.
We eat to embrace life.

Here we grow old
fat or thin, all beautiful
& honoured
as grand-mothers.


by Jennifer Boire, from In Our Mother’s Garden: Or A Place of trees.  Chapbook Published by Over the Moon Press, Montreal, 2003. Shared with permission of the author.