Every winter Friday before dancing school my mother felt my hands, shaking her head as she pulled the white gloves of ladyhood over my icicle fingers. "Sit on them," she advised gently. So, in a straight-backed girl-chair facing the rigid boy-chairs across the waltz of the piano I sat on my numb hands fearful some little boy sweating the steps through cotton palms would discover he was clutching the shame of my ice-boned glove. My hands stayed frostbitten through those rituals of romance. And still in the winter months of life my hands turn to the season - twig knuckles creaking in the wind - as the ice of ladyhood gloves my fingers. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ESSAY ON STONE by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE COAT OF FIRE by EDITH SITWELL TO A CHILD DANCING IN THE WIND: 2 by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS BRUCE AND THE SPIDER by BERNARD BARTON QUATORZAINS: 5. TO NIGHT by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES TO LIZBIE BROWNE by THOMAS HARDY HENRY PURCELL by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS A GENTLE ECHO ON WOMAN (IN THE DORIC MANNER) by JONATHAN SWIFT |