A Woman is Not a Potted Plant

As promised in a previous post, we shall be celebrating this year’s Women’s Day with a series of ‘womano-centric poems’.

This poem is the first in our ‘Celebrating Women Through Poetry’ buffet. Enjoy!

 A woman is not a potted plant
her roots bound 
to the confines 
of her house

a woman is not
a potted plant
her leaves trimmed
to the contours 
of her sex

a woman is not
a potted plant
her branches
espaliered
against the fences
of her race
her country
her mother
her man
her trained blossom
turning this way
and
that
to follow
the sun
of whoever feeds
and waters
her

a woman
is wilderness
unbounded
holding the future
between each breath
walking the earth
only because
she is free
and not creeper vine
or tree

Nor even honeysuckle
or bee.

By Alice Walker

Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. She wrote the novel The Color Purple (1982), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Source: Wikipedia

Poem source: Anything Urban

What do you think of this poem? What is the author trying to convey? Leave your thoughts in the comments and let’s chat!