SYNERGY

GREENHAM WOMEN
- Wendy Poussard, Australia

Rugged up for winter snow
you have put your bodies
where your hearts are . . .
against the gates and
under the wheels of war.
Today the missiles came
to Greenham Common.
We saw it in the papers
and wept for you.
You are our elder sisters,
making the time kindly
to send us greeting as
you beat against the storm.
Like you we sit
on the doorstep of the world's end
and will not look away.
The people long to know
something is indestructible.
It may be only you.


Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp (1981 - 2000)

I had never head of the Greenham protest until I read this poem. Wasn't it in Greece, where the women boycotted (sex) for the end of the Pelopennesian war?

This one goes out to all our sisters who are on the front lines, risking far more than disapproval.
It seems that when we women aren't distracted by our myriad differences, we can be quite formidable.

Synergy

• A dynamic state in which combined action is favored over the sum of individual component actions.
• Behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately.

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite