Anna Evans
The Virgin Queen
My textbooks seemed controlled by bishops, kings,
emperors and popes, with one exception--
you, Elizabeth, who had done things
princes would quail at, who had, from conception,
flouted the rules, with beauty, grace and wit,
walked a thin line, and got away with it.
I was obsessed: your sly, six-fingered mother,
your florid father's appetites, the church
dissolved, divorce, adultery and other
intrigues of the court. A girl could search
the TV--just four channels then--and find
no drama more addictively designed.
I wanted your clothes! The bird-cage seed-pearl skirts,
the ruffs, the silks, the velvet and brocade,
and yet, you had learned early how love hurts,
sworn to abjure men and stay a maid
for England! Virgin by choice, when I was still
unkissed, you cheered me up with your free will,
even though it blighted your later life--
the bitter spinster, cheeks daubed with white lead.
While I picked different options, became a wife
twice, and took many others to my bed,
I always loved you, not for fleeting beauty,
but for conceit beyond the call of duty.
Fluid Mechanics I
"I will put chaos into fourteen lines"~Edna St. Vincent Millay
Turbulent flow: the phrase propels me back
in time--the smell of chalk, the wooden seating
in Lecture Theatre One; I have a stack
of text books on my lap, but what's competing
for my attention versus all the Greek
letters and numbers, is a boy a row
in front of me--which one? Depends which week.
What happened to that girl? Turbulent flow
caught her up in its chaotic motion--
marriage, office drudgery, divorce,
remarriage, kids, a move across an ocean--
she never seemed to hold a constant course
but somehow kept her head above the water
breathing deep as each new current caught her.
Like Father
You sent me Heaney's Beowulf with a note--
handwritten. I can see within the arc
of every letter that you ever wrote
to me, my style, my penmanship, the dark
cursive lines that run between us two.
I'm everything I am because of you.
You taught me how to look beneath the skin:
the archeology of words, that history
is only written by the ones who win;
you taught me Latin, chess and sophistry.
You taught me how to cook a roast, to think,
to solder, and to saw, and how to drink.
When I was twelve or so you almost crashed
the car I had persuaded you to drive;
I think that was the same bad year you smashed
the glass in drunken petulance. I'm alive
and you are too--it could have been much worse.
Plus you instilled in me a love of verse
that often saves me when wine can't or won't.
I'm tolerant of flawed yet brilliant men
because of you. Because of you I don't
drive drunk. I always think about you when
I set the bottle--half-full--on the shelf,
forgiving you. I can't forgive myself. |
