the warrior

Media: Found Objects Wall Sculpture
Dimensions: 24" long
Date of Work: 01/03

My sister had the misfortune of being born
with a soul too big for her small body.
A hero’s soul born to an un-heroic age,
meant, I think, for a grander stage.

The French revolution might have been her calling…
a righteous Parisian dam, breasts bare,
tearing down the Bastille with her two hands!

Or an Amazon on the battlefields of ancient Troy-
chopping down the Myrmidon while screaming down the gods!
Or a suffragette walking arm and arm with Emma G.-
sisters chained together on the courthouse steps!

But instead she was born too late for bra burnings,
too young to protest Vietnam,
now too old for youthful revolutions.

In this mediocre age of exiled heroes and the long deferred dream,
she and others of her self same rage
idle their days in silent expectation of some great
and secret something that never will arrive.

So left to their own devices,
like well trained solders without a cause to stand behind,
they turn their weapons on themselves
and fight the battle from within.

(poetry by Dane O’Hara)