Poetry Friday–RBG

Happy Poetry Friday!
(typed with a slight sigh, from this last week…)

What a week… This week for Poetry Friday there were two prompt suggestions. One came a while back from Tanita Davis one of the Poetry Sisters/Princesses. The prompt was to write a poem either using a hippo or “the word ‘ponderous’ in any poetic form.”
Well a long time ago I had an encounter with a wonderful hippo named Peepo in either Greece or Spain. I started drafting a poem on this delightfully ponderous creature and will sometime return to it. Thought with the news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, I felt compelled to write a poem about this larger-than-life woman, who’s meant so much to me and so many others.

Our second prompt came from our Poetry Friday roundup host for this week Jone Rush MacCulloch–visit her at her new blog: Jone Rush MacCulloch. She’s asked us to write a poem that tells a story with mathematics or a poem honoring “a brave woman–” And hence my poem on RBG fits that well. Thanks for hosting Jone!

RBG FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE

Though ponderous obstacles lined RBG’s journey–
Fighting for acts of justice captured and crystalized
her thoughts and direction, and guided her life’s work.

Inspired by her heroine Eleanor Roosevelt,
leading the newly formed 
“United Nations Commission on Human Rights.”
RBG, while in eighth grade, 
began scribing her scales of justice,
reaching for truths, as she wrote,
our world now has a “fifth great document,
the Charter of the United Nations,”
which asks all of us to maintain
“international peace and security,”
to practice tolerance, and to
suppress any acts of aggression
or other breaches of peace.”
We school children must take this lead in 
“the promotion of peace.
We must “live together 
with one another as good neighbors.”
For we now live in a world
capable of annihilating itself.    

RBG’s law school graduation
with honors,
left her unemployed
due to her
Jewish religion
Female gender, 
and motherhood.
But–
She continued to persevere– 
She climbed higher
and higher, through
an apprenticeship,
through teaching positions
at Rutgers Law School, 
and Columbia Law School,
through litigating trials,
and her long awaited appointment as 
Federal Judge in 1980 by President Carter, and
Second woman appointed to the US Supreme Court,
in 1993, by President Clinton.
RBG continued her advocacy for 
Women’s rights, gender equality,
and leveling equality between
men and women
in the workplace.
Taking on stardom stature,
from her efforts, she worked
relentlessly until her death

Her life suspended by thread, 
ready to recoil at any moment–
She’s become
a heroine who
kept our hope going, 
our hope high, and
our hope renewed–
Let’s keep going

© 2020 Michelle Kogan

Quotes taken from: My Own Words Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with Mary Hartnett, and Wendy Williams, New York, Simon & Schuster.

Dusty Rose, © 2018, Michelle Kogan, pen and ink, and watercolor.

Roses for RBG, remember forever, xo

In case you missed, I had some good poetry news this week. My poem, MY POSTAL LADY was featured in the PRIME MOVERS Series by Silver Birch Press, you can find it here.

Visit Renée LaTulippe at No Water River to find out more about what Poetry Friday is.