Secret-knowing woman. Ghazal

My father caught him a crazy quiet secret-knowing woman

Sensible when she had to be but a weirdness-stowing woman


I want to be brave and cuckoo like her, fierce like nobody’s watching

A continent-striding, thundercloud-riding, oceangoing woman


I know the closets where she hid, the stages she burst out on

I watched her close, that lipstick-glowing, caftan-flowing woman


I knew her young, I knew her old, I knew her typing, scrubbing

I knew her loving, I knew her forgetting, a wondering, slowing woman


I loved the goofy, madcap games, although she sometimes scared me

The oddball soul within that truly bright-line-toeing woman


We lived on hymns and prayers and fun. On Shakespeare bursting forth

From deep inside a bubble-blowing, real churchgoing woman


Silence and words. Music and hush. Glamor and hard, bitter work

Good night, my mother, you tiny, enormous, life-overthrowing woman.




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