Gillian Stone
Resident
Now they are gone,
They are all gone,
The crowd of happy hunters singing.
They jostled through the doors,
Out of the gates, polishing their spears.
Laughing, mock-fighting, cheering,
Singing, going.
The women have gone too,
To plant, to weed,
To bend their backs to work. They have taken
With them the darting children,
And the baskets.
They are gone, they are all gone,
And the noise.
The silence
Begins to prove its absence.
The trees’ slight movements
Out of vertical
Tell on their leaves
A mild continuous roar.
The sun entices flying insects out.
Their changed directions, speeds,
Make thin sound-doodles in the air.
I stay
With leaves, with insects,
With the intermittent thud
Of ripe fruit falling, my
Movements slight.
The hunters long ago
Gave up the effort
Of teaching me to kill. The women
Wag their heads and say I’ll
Never make a gardener. They laugh
And do not seem so much to mind that
I do nothing.
I sometimes think
They think I don’t exist,
But somehow when they come again at night
With all their hubbub, I
Feel that they are glad I stayed at home,
Assured that while they went, their
Place was lived in.
Page(s) 135
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