Anita’s women are made of gold:

Light shining from an unseen source,

Maybe the sun of a tropic dawn,

If not itself the auric glow, paints

Their white kerchiefs, loose kimonas,

Slit eyes, strong brown necks and arms: gold.

 

Those long stalks, those spears of leaf

And crimson blossom they bundle and wrap

In paper cones—all shine with vibrant

Pulse of spectrum that extracts

Mere dazzle from light and leaves those

Wings aflame, a-flutter, ready to take flight.

 

Thus we dwell in them, nay, adore

In them all the women of our race—

Keepers of our hearth, hovel, or mansion—

These figments of Anita’s pigments: not

In the dullness of our days, but in the ultimate

Meaning of brownness: the mother of all gold.

 

 

Marne Kilates

May 7, 2012

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