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Nesting Instinct of Women (Free verse) by Dovina

Inside the hive a virgin worker lies bent head and folded wings sealed within her quiet cell until awakened from larval sleep by caress and beating of her sisters' wings She fears to leave behind the fixed prismatic form hesitates at the void of space the brilliant outdoor color and shrinks from loneliness of light Duty draws her from the nest wind twists her from the course but she knows she can return to familiar smell of honeycomb where her sisters work and others wait to be born

zodiac 31-May-05/5:47 AM
"Virtue"
- Cynthia Huntington

All the houses are white;
all the yards have yellow flowers
attended by bees.
If you must be born female
try coming as an insect -
they have the edge. Bees
spoil their little brothers just
so long and then they're through.
The queen has a hundred lovers,
her daughters, none. A nation of sisters
lives forever: wasps and ants.
Here in New England
you'll come across old family plots
- farmers with two or three wives
set down in a row; prayers and faint praise
for the good woman, wife, mother:
modest and weary, homely as a shoe.
How she stirred and kneaded,
baked, sewed, scrubbed, and bore down.

I let the ants come in my kitchen
and carry off bread crumbs.
Girl soldiers, all discipline and grit.
Flies buzz the heads of stupefied cows,
up to their knees in yarrow,
hissing: "wake up, wake up!"
Their teats swell, heavy with milk,
long after their done
being anyone's mother.
In the corner of the garage
a spider devours her mate,
wraps up what she can't finish
and hangs it to dry. Mosquitos
murmur for blood in the high grasses.

A car door slams down the street.
Milk and honey, butter and jam,
what virtue in living as a slave?
In the kitchen I unpack groceries:
sweet peas, cider, wild honey, pears
burst from the flowering branch.

(copied without permission from Poetry Daily, www.poems.com)




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