International Woman

My International Woman
knows exactly where she was born
in a small town in Iowa

From a family long ago uprooted
from the side of a fjord in Norway

Seeded and settled and nested
where there are no fjords
and where they drained lakes

For the deep rich soil
prairies patiently leave behind

Who counts all her ancestors
from northern fjords

But with gathered and garnered children
Asian and European and African

In one generation
she has become the world
her mother had not imagined

Before her daughter looked
beyond the low horizons
west and east and south

Recognizing the faces
of human family

She sits at her computer
International Woman
finding other women
on other continents

Sending them goats and loans
because they are women
looking over their own horizons

Dreaming

Like the International Woman
In my life

March 8, 2010

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