Terracotta Woman

Inspired by an amazing woman who doesn't know her own strength, and dedicated to all the strong women I know.

I am a Terracotta woman, but was not always so.

Motley red dirt, dispersed by the merest breeze,
Fighting an implacable foe to just be me.
Wind - moody, flighty, mercurial, evil puppeteer!
Who am I? Lifeless dust dancing on strings.

The Sun is no friend, relentless like a disease.
Virulent rays wear away, chip away, gnaw away,
Sear my will away, as my form blows away into nothing,
Until the clay I am burns to a deathly still.

Time marks only the slow crawl of desolation
Feebly I clutch at identity, and fail, and fail.
Enemies that never tire dissolve me into chaos,
So I become one with the faceless mud around me.

Who am I? Nothing, and no one, forevermore.

A trickle of Water now, but is the change welcome?
Is this yet another foe to paralyze me into despair?
Hope springs unbidden as liquid life fills my veins,
Where there once were motes, there is a Me.

Who am I? I don't know yet, but it is not nothing.
Scorching sunbeams cut me up like many daggers,
What once oozed blood, only shapes earthen sinew.
Weakness is strength, old foe a nurturing womb.

Now there's a breeze, now there's a gale, and again,
Gentle susurrations tickle, heavy tempests topple,
Try, try, they fail, becoming instead the chisel,
That fortifies, sculpting a skeleton of Terracotta.

Like a solitary dam against an onrushing torrent,
I am strength itself, a sum of parts, but so much more.
The Wind dies, The Water slows, The Sun sleeps,
Whole of mind, sturdy of form, I will not yield.


I am a Terracotta woman, and I will endure.