Gail White
Why Should Not Old Dames Go Wild
(A reply to Yeats — “Why should not old men be mad?)
Why should not old dames go wild?
A woman learns while still a child
To set no limit on her dreams—
But all is not the way it seems.
She may do anything—but then
Just won’t be paid as much as men.
How far off still, the longed-for day
Of equal work for equal pay!
And just in reach, yet hard to pass,
The shining ceiling made of glass!
A woman learns, while in her teens,
The many things that loving means.
Guys talk of love who only care
To part her from her underwear.
If marriage comes, and children too,
The extra work falls—guess on who?
She learns divisions of her day—
One half a drudge, one half a prey,
With all that she’s endured—and smiled—
Why should an old dame not go wild?
Mother and Daughter
“I wish you took more interest in your clothes”,
my mother used to say. I didn’t care
a damn. I thought I had an ugly nose.
She wished I took more interest in my hair,
my makeup, all the pretty girly things.
I had no use for femininity.
Why wasn't I a Barbie doll on springs?
She loved a girl who was and wasn’t me.
Then I grew up and left. I even dared
to travel. (“Why must you go back to Rome?”)
And when (at last!) I married, she declared
she wished I took more interest in my home.
I skipped the motherhood routine. Instead
I wrote. Was immortality the goal?
My mother and my husband—both now dead.
I wish I took more interest in my soul.
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