spinster
teacher
Brown spraying leaves
whirling, sober as autumn
on a white high-necked shirt;
a girl constrained in sepia calm
wanting to smile then for her soldier
on a foreign field, laughing at her still
from a faded frame,
through ribboned letters;
leaving a thin silver locket but no ring,
a touch of loneliness about the eyes,
and a gift for gathering children
to her like a cloak of birds,
warming, dreaming, homing
over her evening sky.
maids
So many black shapes,
simple blocks of pattern,
regularly set amongst strange
and surely irreconcilable colour;
dark, disciplined, always overlooked,
they are held to be non-persons, shadows;
uniformed pools of ordered
quiet, expendable,
they offer blind loyalty, answering need:
servants, parlourmaids, night-habited
with silent caps, falling aprons,
mute lips, smothered longings
and no inappropriate joy,
waiting to be called.
(November,
1990)
