This Year Women Lead

“Women Breaking Through”

by Toni Truesdale

artist/muralist/illustrator/teacher

“Women are breaking through the bitter darkness,

Caused by centuries of patriarchal domination after stealing the Mother Right.

Millennia of struggle, against poverty, plagues,

Disease, persecution, inquisition, rape, genocide, slavery, feudalism, imperialism...

The last one hundred years of unprecedented toll on human life:

Europe, Hiroshima, Africa, Indochina,

Central and South America,

Balkan wars, the Mideast....

The continued destruction of indigenous cultures, spirituality, languages;

The extinction of species;

Poisoning of the planet.

Women need to come forward to rebalance the forces of life with the children of the world. May we will speak in one unified multicultural voice of peace, preservation and protection.

And we will break through....”

“Women Breaking Through” was featured on the cover of WEMoon Datebook 2007. She now lives in Biddeford, Maine. website: ToniTruesdale.com all rights reserved

“The Legend of Prester John”

“Perhaps the purpose of pilgrimage is to seek a great spiritual truth;

Search for protection, absolution, healing...

Too, there is the need for the magical...

Wander into the realm of the elusive mage king, Prester John.

Just like the Magi,

We are still in search for this magnificent bestiary, 

That sacred space between yesterday and tomorrow ,

The vast fantastical empire of Prester John,

Timeless, mysterious, immortal, supernatural, alchemical;

Land of enchanted creatures and river of Paradise;

Reputed to be located somewhere between 

The red plains of Africa and indigo mountains of Tibet

 Lies the legacy of the Beautiful Black Sheba

And the bleached bones of her beloved Solomon;

As under the ancient sands rest the reliquary of saints, 

The tomb of St. Thomas, with the long sought grail.

There is that medieval place of the magnificent conjureman, Prester John.

Not the John of Darkness,

The Baptist, Emperor, orThe Divine;

The Great, Popes I and III, not John Paul II,

Gaunt, Damascus, The Cross, King ( not a good man, was he);

Not even Brother John, or Burlington John..

Neither Revelating John  of the Seven Seals,

Nor Ole John Henry.

But the trickster kingman, Prester 

We keep looking for you, John...”

- Toni Truesdale

copyright 20

Path of Tears

Path of Tears

Historical grief slips secretly generation into generation

Unseen yet visible emotionally 

In sterile familiar poverty;

Pain, sacrifice still poisons unresolved time,

Victims caught in moments of past tragedy

Leaving a legacy of tears that haunt children presently.

Adults respond by drinking away impersonal pain 

Leading  to destruction, self imposed this time, again

From  senses becoming incomplete

And, the  land murmurs in despair, as well as in

The very air 

Filters atmosphere, pathos steeped ...

Spirits all around

Some Native to this land, others brought to serve and slave

Still overlapping the sequence

beyond dying, out side the living

Imprints of sorrow nestled in the soil

Discerned by the unconscious living mind

The footprints of historic grief....