for Gail McConnell
I
How much of what we scribble down survives –
Sappho’s miraculous bits and pieces,
Dialect words for kitchen utensils,
See-through dresses, moonbeams – somebody
At a busy street corner advising
Where to shop for chickpeas and mascara.
II
Let blank spaces between parentheses
Be annotated thus by me and you
Who loiter in the margin, Sapphic souls –
Silence that has lasted a thousand years
Is poetry of a kind, Gail, poetry
Like a brain-child impatient to be born.
III
O suburban parthenogenesis,
I eavesdrop on a holy family –
Sappho would have fallen for Beth and you –
Two mothers, two wives, a baby boy’s
Thumb-sucking bliss, glistening eyelids,
Hazel-nuts safe beneath a Lesbos sky.
