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