Morningside Park, Hand, Stump

I. Suffrage

 

Let her do the baking.

Let her make butterbread from the ashes

of days burnt together collecting

-- from breeze, from snowfall --

the flour and water, the yeast

of the Phoenix sunrise.

Her hands are large and stillwet,

boats on supple water flying sails

that race the wind's sifting waves.

 

In summer,

give her coxcomb and queenannslace

to knot in her hair,

let her gather chokecherries

and press them into bitter liqueur

to glitter red in next season's sun.

Read the poem written

in her hand:

Hold Your Peace.

 

- from Woman in Tall Black, c. 1986

Done