I do not know a lot of things

Like viscera reports and forensics

Paleontology … sounds absurd

Quantum physics is surely worse

Biology practicals, trust me I tried

The world of organs that dwell inside.

Why wars are fought, why nations wince

Why terror rears up and humanity shrinks.

Why nations edge to the brink of war, what causes pain

Who wields the greatest power of them all, but then again

I know not how many men it takes

to tame one woman.

 

 

I do know the purple of a setting sun

The whistle of the moon when night is done

The smiling voices that greet my day

The hands that hold me, in work or play

Those souls who matter, the hearts that care

The stillness when I imagine you here

The words I speak with true intent

The life I lead so intemperate

Mixed on earth with wind and rain

And sometimes my words are said in vain

But I do know no man

should try to tame a woman.

 

 

 

 

P.S. I am generally not in the habit of explaining my poetry. But I felt I had to add a foot-note to this one. This poem was ‘inspired’ by the memory of a conversation I had with an acquaintance years ago when he set about trying to convince me that all women need to be tamed first by the father, then brothers and later husbands etc etc etc (he also believed in female circumcision but that’s another story, another poem) and I had this huge fall out that left me storming out of the place where we were and him screaming that that was exactly the kind of woman he would never wish his sisters to be! I hope his sisters are well and have turned out un-tamed. Yes, that.