For Dr. Potter, Forever Ago

The Maddalena in Wood and Gold

And so she crawled out of the desert,
dressed in nothing but her hair,
long, dirty tangles hanging to her knees.
She had served her penance for previous misdeeds
born from the inglorious times before
she met her lord in a field like a gardener.

Cheeks hollowed and eyes sunken,
she might be half dead for all we know,
her face a mass of scars and burns.
But in those smooth hands,
perfectly carved to each muscle
sliding under her wooden skin,
we can recall the beauty
that brought men to her door,
like the strands of gold glimpsed
in the knots of her hair.

Burkha

While darting through crowds in the Oxford train station,
constantly battling luggage with the broken wheel,
perpetually lagging at the back of the group,
I glanced a glance between a black-shrouded woman
And her smooth haired, well-suited husband.

I had considered that black wrap a fabric prison,
forbidding any passion, any desire from escaping,
draping the body, hiding crossed knees.
Not even a chance to laugh, to turn one’s head,
and to smile over the back of a bare shoulder.

Yet her eyes, as they watched him under kohl lashes,
smoldering hot and deep brown,
revealed more than any plunging neckline.
That look was purely female, from the first time
Samson met Delilah, and went weak at the knees.

That look transcends all religious observations
and the puritanical collars that drove Hester Prynne
into the woods with the reverend one night.
And contained within the depths of a void of cloth
there beats the heart of a woman, well alive.


Little Globe, Big Dreams

This is an impotent globe.
China, barely the size of a pencil eraser,
is a stub mark on a tennis ball.
What can this globe really tell
the questioning traveler
about the Victoria Falls?

This is a tiny globe.
It will over compensate
for its diminutive stature
with a shiny golden stand
and intricate blue veins
tracing the path of the Nile.

This is a resigned globe.
It cannot rise above
its status as a novelty toy holding court
on a professor’s crowded desk;
knowing it will never be used
to find the capital of Uraguay.


A Prince’s Lost Future

If I had lived to be an old man
maybe I would have reflected in wisdom,
looked into my youth, and asked myself;
was fulfilling my desire worth the loss?
When I saw her walking among my women
was it necessary to demand her
without even knowing her name?
I was a prince, I could have been king.

If I had stopped to think, consider;
maybe my brothers would still be living,
and we would have grandchildren
playing among our tents in the dirt,
instead of a city full of graves
and women without men.
I was a prince, I could have been king.

If only I had not loved her, needed her,
from the moment I saw one graceful wrist
bending as she gestured to my sister.
If only I had known a tribe of families
could bring the wrath of nations
against indisposed men.
I was a prince, I could have been king.