We women stand in our men shoes, our bodies
doing this unfamiliar thing. Hands that scrubbed
clothes in wash basins, wrung pillowcases, hung white
flannel sheets on long clothes lines, pinning and clipping,
how now those hands have become cranes, each hand
a link in a chain, joining steel feathers, building birds
of prey. It was the world turned inside out. It was
a time when birds migrated here from Germany
to hunt prey. Each lift of arm a piece of the jigsaw,
build muscles on our puny arms. The lift – slot, lift
– slot, lift – slot, seven days for three years. My fingers
would crush my pay slips, fold fresh notes, slip each
between my breast, burying my independence in the folds
of my body. How our bones rose up in dark times and held
the hounds at bay. How our bodies fed the children, how we
endured. How we grew wings in these dark times
and when our men returned they hacked off our wings
with hatchets and folded us back into the kitchen.