99poems/fiddle

My feet on the stool
beneath my desk
feel like the feet
on the card
she just sent.
A young woman
with a fiddle
across her lap,
“What ugly feet,”
I said out loud
when I opened it
to read.
A bohemian woman,
I wondered if she
was some ancestral
truth.
Her coarse masculine
hands folded on
her lap.
Her delicate face
and seeking eyes
denouncing
her hands and feet.
The kind of mistake
that nature sometimes
makes.
I looked at her
several times,
admiring the way
she sat –
her skirt draped
between her open
knees.
She was an honest
woman it was
clear, one who
stands her ground
and makes her own
joys,
and so she needed
strong feet.

5/5/99