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...THE MARRIAGE (1) by TIMOTHY LIU THE COTTON CLUB by CLARENCE MAJOR A MENDOCINO MEMORY by EDWIN MARKHAM ABU SALAMMAMM - A SONG OF EMPIRE by EZRA POUND GOOD FRIDAY HYMN by GEORGE SANTAYANA TO A PACIFIST FRIEND by GEORGE SANTAYANA A COLONIAL MORNING DREAM by KAREN SWENSON |