The cages beneath the billowing skirts
Of the lady of the house
Were designed not only to accentuate the width of her hips
But also to provide a means of mobile storage.
These contraptions held
the unbroken circle of keys
that fit the locks in every room, chest, and cupboard
as well as snatches of paper,
Notes to be read aloud for the illiterate servants
Orders from abroad, letters from her liege
Tucked away beside the broken-off end of her husband's clay pipe
Handed to her in a moment of absent-minded laziness.
There too she stows the flowers picked by her daughters
and wriggling worms collected by her sons,
'til these things can be discreetly returned to nature
without alerting the little darlings to their escape.
And there are sweetmeats and candies
nestled amid clean handkerchiefs, white as the hand of an English queen
for rewarding a good deed or soothing a scraped knee
or pacifying a baby with the cholic.
Work gloves, too, could fit in those fathomless compartments—
ah, what wonders lie beneath a woman's skirts!
YOU ARE READING
Poems Don't Have to Rhyme
PoesíaPoetry collection. Some of it is pretty good, most of it is pretty bad.
