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Signed Poem: For the Women Poets
By Lee Meitzen Grue They say old men write best about
love.
What then of old women?
Do they moan into the wind?
Do their words curl up like red
and gold
paper Chinese prayers stillborn
into air? I know those ancient
women
sang of loss. Anonymous,
a hand speckled as a bird's egg
rocked the cradle,
Lully, lullay, lully, lullay
the falcon hath borne my mate
away.
And some of them sang the blues
knowing
where blues come from,
where blood is common and
mysterious
as the moon.
My mother is a stitcher,
she serves them new blue jeans.
My sweetheart is a drunkard,
Lord,
down in New Orleans.
Listen these poets
made poems like quilts, like
curtains,
like Irish lace.
They stitched aprons for babies,
sweaters for sons.
Real anonymous as Mary, Martha, or
Grace
as Faith, Hope or Charity, but
also
as a plain woman called Prudence,
who knew her place, kept her
distance,
leaving her words as her other
works,
unsigned.
Source:
In the Sweet Balance of the
Flesh
by Lee Meitzen Grue. Austin,
Texas: Plain View Press |
