Often, on reading what a man has said
In poetry, I am astonished by
His confidence that no-one will ask why
He wrote down figments flitting through his head
Like bubbles in the stream of consciousness.
My female caution checks such blobs of thought
And scrutinises them – and, being caught,
They burst, as bubbles will. Their emptiness
Confirms my doubt. How rash I would have been
To show such insubstantial things! And yet,
If I could cry, Oh, look, look! – and forget
My fearfulness, their lustre might be seen.
Are we too real, my sisters? Should we share
The male ability to trust the air?
1994
Tread carefully, a child upon the hip,
A hand in yours. Beware the turning stone,
The deep gap between sedge-clumps, the wind-blown
Grasses, smooth as fur, where foot may slip
Down to a covered hole. Know your terrain,
Accept it, understand it, fit your skill
To leaf and bark and water, watch the hill
For cloud-change, find a shelter from the rain.
The men plan strategies, their eyes alight
With dreams. As sky and tree-branch interlace,
So they with us, like air in earth’s embrace,
A match of equal opposites by night.
No groundlings they, their thoughts like comets fly –
But, lacking earth, they would not know the sky.
1994
Sometimes they are magnificent, the men,
Flying to God with slender sticks and string
To infiltrate the heavens on frail wing
Like Icarus, who built a mad machine
Of hope and wax-held plumes, challenged the sun
And died for his conceit. They challenge still,
In folly and magnificence. They kill
Themselves and us, rather than leave undone
The do-able. And we should aim as high,
Fire poem-bullets at the public mind,
They say. But do we want to? Will we find
Contentment in this urge to do and die?
Ishtar, Osiris, Mary, pray for me,
That I may not forget simply to Be.
1994