Sharded in black, like beetles,
Frail as antique earthenwear
One breath might shiver to bits,
The old women creep out here
To sun on the rocks or prop
Themselves up against the wall
Whose stones keep a little heat.
Needles knit in a bird-beaked
Counterpoint to their voices:
Sons, daughters, daughters and sons,
Distant and cold as photos,
Grandchildren nobody knows.
Age wears the best black fabric
Rust-red or green as lichens.
At owl-call the old ghosts flock
To hustle them off the lawn.
From beds boxed-in like coffins
The bonneted ladies grin.
And Death, that bald-head buzzard,
Stalls in halls where the lamp wick
Shortens with each breath drawn.
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Comments
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The static cling of death everywhere in such a place. I found "grandchildren no body knows," and
"Sons, daughters, daughters and sons,
Distant and cold as photos," to be very disheartening lines. She captured the mood of these places perfectly.
The line "Age wears the best black fabric," was a clever way to say these ladies are in mourning, as if constant. Perhaps for their own selves, how close to death they are and how death must cling to their every thought.
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I liked her imagery here I felt this was a poem showing the fragility and age of the place, a little like the women and I thought originally that this could be an old people's home but as I read on I thought it was more like a natural place
Pozo
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