Dedicated to all good women

(Spoken alone, as to the stars)

O gentle night, bend low and hear my tongue,

For I must speak what swells within my breast,

Lest silence rob the world of its chief light.

What is a good woman? Not frail ornament,

Nor idle rose that blooms but to be plucked

She is the living temple of the sun,

Where warmth and wisdom in one altar meet.

She rises when the world would still lie down,

Her hands, though small, bear up the weary years;

She mends the broken thread of shattered homes,

And in her eyes the future learns to hope.

When tempests rage and lesser souls take flight,

She stands O steadfast oak in woman’s form

Her laughter ringing clear above the storm,

A quiet courage fiercer than the blade.

She is the mother who, with patient fire,

Turns restless clay of children into men;

The wife whose love is anchor, sail, and star,

Guiding her chosen heart through unknown seas.

She is the friend whose silence heals more deep

Than volumes spoken by ungentle tongues;

The scholar, veiled or crowned, whose mind outshines

The boastful learning of presumptuous fools.

Beauty she wears not as a beggar’s crown

But as the moon wears silver naturally.

Her mercy flows where justice would run dry,

Yet steel lives in her when mercy is betrayed.

She forgives, yet remembers; yields, yet commands;

Gives all, and in the giving grows the more.

Ye gods, if ever ye have fashioned well,

Behold your masterpiece in woman’s grace!

Not Eve alone who brought the world its fall,

But she who bears redemption in her arms 

The Bunmi, Oyindamola, and countless unnamed stars

Whose quiet virtues light the path of ages.

O good women! You are the secret pulse

That keeps this weary earth from turning cold.

While men may thunder, conquer, build, and burn,

You  you are life’s own rhythm, soft yet strong,

The cradle and the grave of every dream.

Without you, glory is but hollow noise,

And love itself a word without a tongue.

I praise thee, woman good and true and wise,

Not with light flattery or courtly lies,

But with a heart struck silent by thy worth.

May heaven guard thee as thou guardest us,

And may the ages sing thy name in gold

When all our wars and vanities are dust.

(He bows his head in reverence)

Blessed be she who walks this earth in light

The good woman: earth’s grace, and heaven’s delight.