Learning What It Is To Be A Woman \ Pipits

Nancy:  Think of it as “take your daughter to work day” for the ‘30s.  There was work to do and more hands – even young ones – made lighter work.  Me, Mama, Granny, Aunt Mary, Aunt Nannie: often four or five generations.  In retrospect, I’d choose it over preschool or play dates. 

Learning What It Is To Be A Woman

I learned from women.

By example, deliberately: how to

shave heavy bars of laundry soap into

translucent curls; how to scald jars;

how to stretch curtains and plant roses

and hem handkerchiefs.

I learned

by maxim and frequent admonition:

not to run so much; not to sprawl;

not to be loud; not to call attention

to myself immodestly; not to go down the

creek on a raft with the boys.

I learned

elliptically, by half-sentences and silences:

as I sat beneath a ripple of words, three

women in straight chairs shelling peas;

as I teased out the knots forming and loosing

in the murmurous green air, three generations

of women, three kitchen chairs under the trees.

And of course I went on to learn

by misadventure and disappointment;

learn from men; learn from children;

learn from unexpected doses of bitter and sweet

as they had, as they knew I would.

For a long time I thought I was moving away.

But they’ve been waiting, I’ve been catching up.

There’s a chair there for me, four women,

four generations at the center of the maze.

I still have one or two things to learn.

Alan:  For years, Memorial Day weekend meant “Bird Day,” a 24 hour just-for-fun species count ending at our house.  Our friend Marion Stocking was like the whippoorwills that we could count on being here each spring without fail, until one year they weren’t.

Pipits

In Memoriam MKS

Late May, and into June

we have, if no longer

a full dawn chorus

and its evening echo 

(too many losses in our

local avifauna for that –

the steady swirl of species

going down the drain),

at least a decent choir,

slowly diminishing each week

to high summer’s quietude,

the way your hearing thinned,

the highest pitches –

black-and-white warbler,

pine siskin – going first,

and gradually the range

of musics still emerging

from our depauperate woods

and fields becoming

half-felt buzz.

Still, each year’s visit,

you’d walk out at dusk,

pale with the exhausting day,

away from the chatter,

to cup your ear

for the Swainson’s thrush,

somewhere down the hill,

a bird of memory

you knew was there;

then, turn back

unfulfilled, pausing only

to savor the last daffodils

and the sweetest, pipits,

named for a bird we’d never

seen or heard here: small

yellow trumpets

glowing silently

in the almost dark.