Sun-blind in the pharmacy's dim light, I drift between the glass-topped counters that display modern panaceas and dried dosages of Chinese wisdom. Over fish bones, stag horns, roots, I find almost myself - red hair, myopic eyes, but Irish and much younger. Her voice a mist of brogue, she stands, extravagantly pregnant, a baby's burp stain on her shoulder, beside her Chinese mother-in-law who plays twig-fingers on the register's keys. In this hushed light she's an elder goddess, Kuan Yin dispensing mercy, eyes dark glints of pity over cheekbones smudged with age spots. "Your second?" I ask the daughter-in-law. "Third." She smiles. "Then life holds few surprises for you." Considering my commonplace, she gravely agrees. "That's true." Her mother-in-law's brittle Chinese fingers count my change. Both women brought their husbands the rich dowries of their races' foreign beauty. They've watched their children building castles on these alien sands, escaping from the netted pull of bloodlines. Together in half-light each is a party to the coalition of all mothers without passports or frontiers. I walk back into the sun's fistful of blades. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TEARS AND KISSES by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON A JOYFUL SONG OF FIVE by KATHERINE MANSFIELD DOMESDAY BOOK: AT FAIRBANKS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS A LETTER TO A POLICEMAN IN KANSAS CITY by KENNETH PATCHEN A POEM FOR MAX NORDAU by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON A BALLAD OF WHITECHAPEL by ISAAC ROSENBERG TO W.P.: 1 by GEORGE SANTAYANA THE DIORAMA PAINTER AT THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY by KAREN SWENSON |