GOOD WOMEN

by Nan Hunt

In Kashmir a man said ---
You don’t want to talk to our women;
they live like frogs in a well.

Good women capture their hair
hold their tongues, erase their faces
bend over hoes, bear jugs, crops
the weight of men, their children.

Good women, eyes saturate
with darkness in low-stooping shadows
a flicker of hands. Their sight retreats
exiled to memories of girlish

feet which romped the fields, arms
that swung themselves up into trees
tongues that tasted rain.

She-who-argues, who tries escape
must be confined, learns
too readily how to bind herself.

You watch her and strike
your chest, your eyes burn
and melt. You want to blot
contempt from the eyes of her sons.

Girl babies in Kashmir
are neglected to death
in India and China ripped
from the million wombs
safe for males.

There is no separate country ---
an ancient, worldly citizen
stalks us, mother and daughter.

KNOWING
by Nan Hunt

That day some vagueness in motion
passed by the corner of my eye.
Was it a bat, that shadow
like spread and joined membranes?
There had been clarity, then a wrinkle
of dark, then another flicker
blotched the sky just out of
being spied, as though
I was not being attentive:
so, I should be teased this way
with suggestions of bat span
wing glide, cloud race, as air
shifted slightly to let a fact
pass through, but so quick and
obliquely near that I would not
be able to give reality shape or name.
I walked on. The wind announced
from the north -- ruthless goodbyes.
Then it was there before me
and behind, on every side –
not suggestion or elusiveness
leaves sun-fed --- but falling, falling.

LETTER IN WINTER
by Nan Hunt

I have not given up watching
you in my mind’s eye
but we have been apart too long
and I no longer see the colors
of your rooms or whether your lips
ease into a smile.

The phone carries youngness
in our voices closer than
my dim sighted memory. Distance
is that tolerant of years and time
fumbled our good intentions.

Come talk with me and sit near
the welcome of a fire. Warm
cups we’ll hold against cold hands.

What do you search for now that
you have snared so many answers?

I ask you --- Do you feel it?
When the body changes
are the spirits long affections cured?