Mary Rice, who died in 2011, was a Cambridge poet, Somerville Bagel Bard, and for several years, poetry editor for the Somerville-based Ibbetson Street magazine. A convert to Catholicism with a strong feminist bent, she was an admirer of the radical feminist “theologian” Mary Daly (d. 2010).  In Thoughts on the Death of Mary Daly, Rice speculates on Daly’s future in the life after this one, with her typically probing imagination and wit. Mary Rice’s poems are collected in her book Angels and Anarchists, published early this year; for more information, contact Dorian Brooks, dorianb@verizon.net.

Thoughts on the Death of Mary Daly

Did she then, the fierce ecstatic,

find heaven to her liking?  Or

was it a letdown, after the battles

she waged here on Earth?

Going to the Light didn’t seem

her style, and what was bliss

without a body?

Perhaps she went to the heaven

of her childhood, to spend eternity

giving God the Father what for.

Or maybe she returned to the womb

of the goddess, enfolded, dreaming

of wonders like a cat,

until the next time.

— Mary Rice

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