I, Myself Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

You need not please me.
I will satisfy myself.
A woman need not go cheap
For some man's power
When she is her own sun
Her own moon
Her own universe.

I need not move like a fox.
I will leave a trail for all to follow
Into the old growth forest of my soul.
There, in a clearing, stones shining
In a silver circle, I will sing
In the lost language of my ancestresses.

Do not ask me if I am satisfied with childbirth.
I am more than my womb.
More than a warm body.
More than a cradle for your child
A pillow for your head
A home for your heart.

I can and have lived for those I love.
I can and have sacrificed my wild dreams
For domesticated pleasures.
I am more than satisfied,
I am sated,
With the love I give
To husband and sons
Students and strangers
Without worrying about whether they were deserving.

Do not challenge me to live poor.
I will work and earn and spend and invest
As I like, free from both greed and thrift.
I will not flagellate myself for sins I do not feel.
I will not reach for a piety I do not seek to achieve.

I will turn my hands to whatever the moment presents.
I will put my faith in the unnameable.
I will not call my life's harvest a profit
But merely a leaf, budded, unfurled,
A tiny factory for a single summer,
Released from the mother I will return to
As loam, only to bud on a different branch
In a distant spring,
To stretch my senses into the world of the tangible
Again.