Kate Ling
To a Woman I Hardly Know
What of your daughter, now grown up and gone?
Did the plane, which took her round the world
return her home again? What has she done
since we bought her portrait of the girl
with a scar like silver threaded through her skin?
All summer long she looked askance
at somebody beyond the frame.
Each time I walked in on that glance
I found rose petals, burst from stems,
the air filled with the smell of lily dust
and stains like liquid saffron on the cloth.
It was the room in which our daughter slept
and shed her newborn skin. Bracelets of it
fell from her hands as she twisted them,
rehearsing her first dance. It must be
two years since I saw you last;
and your daughter, grown up, tell me,
has she gone? I thought of her today,
when my daughter filled a bucket full of stones
and called my name and waved and walked away.
Did the plane, which took her round the world
return her home again? What has she done
since we bought her portrait of the girl
with a scar like silver threaded through her skin?
All summer long she looked askance
at somebody beyond the frame.
Each time I walked in on that glance
I found rose petals, burst from stems,
the air filled with the smell of lily dust
and stains like liquid saffron on the cloth.
It was the room in which our daughter slept
and shed her newborn skin. Bracelets of it
fell from her hands as she twisted them,
rehearsing her first dance. It must be
two years since I saw you last;
and your daughter, grown up, tell me,
has she gone? I thought of her today,
when my daughter filled a bucket full of stones
and called my name and waved and walked away.
Page(s) 18
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