After Käthe Kollwitz, Self-Portrait, 1921 
 
A girl enters a gallery of etchings, examines 
a self-portrait. Where is the brooch, the bracelet?
The girl knows only to judge women in the way 
 
she has been judged. How all the girls she knows 
are judged and how they judge each other. 
On what’s surface. This face with its angular lines 
 
won’t wheedle power by pleasing. Fingers strong 
as piano keys rest against a weighty skull filled 
with problems of shadow, space, survival. 
 
This subject does not ponder her own appeal, 
does not curl her slack mouth into a compliant smile. 
This artist does not regard a garden of blossoms. 
 
She studies a wick that struggled to burn, snuffed
quickly into a white sigh. This legend’s gaze 
refuses artifice, recognizes a howl as human. The girl 
 
leaves the gallery, finds the end of a sunset skittering 
into night, the cold creeping into her coat, ice-covered 
roads. She doesn’t know if she’ll even make it home.
                        

We traveled in darkness. None of us knew
how long the journey took. When I woke 
I saw a glowing hearth where six women 
bustled, each long-haired and barefoot—
 
the grandmothers. One pressed a package 
into my small hand. I felt the sharp edge 
of a shaft wrapped in soft vellum 
and lost consciousness. As we sailed 
 
to new homes, the gifts they gave us
told stories about caves, rivers, ice. 
Enclosed in the seamless ship, I waited 
for the last glacier to retreat, then found 
 
my home in a Scots Pine forest 
surrounded by a neighborhood of grouse, 
a steppe of bilberries. I longed for company. 
Another human came to me. We sang into 
 
each other’s mouths, felt as one with other 
mammals: cave bears, panthers, reindeer. 
Each word we spoke blossomed. We tied 
the flowers onto strings. Each string became
 
a garland, a sentence. With them, we thanked 
our grandmothers for the gifts of our lives, 
glimpsed the flames of their fires, the thump 
of their feet. They heard us where they dwelled 
 
at the center of the world, at the beginning 
of time. They answered from the stars. Remember 
your long journey through darkness. Remember 
the gifts we gave. We opened our shafts. 
 
They were hollow, stuffed with spiraling 
filaments, glossy specks, kernels within 
gray shells, seeds that will carry life forward.
Seeds that make possible survival. 
                        

Hollyhocks grow
in our lawn near the walk.
 
Their long stems extend
at oblique angles.        
 
Inside cup-like flowers
pollen lies heavy.
 
Yellow petals wrinkle 
like delicate paper.

Why do passers-by 
turn to admire a passing car?