The Naked Ladies

For most of the years that I taught at Dordt, I walked or biked the 10 or 12 blocks between my home and the college.  At some point in my career I began looking for a poem on my way to Dordt.  The flowers that inspired this poem were planted in the narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road—what some of us call the terrace—about 4 blocks from Dordt.  Every year I looked for them, and every year they popped up—always naked as jaybirds.

The Naked Ladies (Amaryllis Belladonna)*

Ten naked ladies dally on the terrace

slender and supple in their

pale pink skin.

Arms raised to heaven

they are nonchalantly naked

as they dance in languid steps

to the rhythm of the breeze.

They have never toiled or spun

only frolicked in the sun.

Ten naked ladies shiver on the terrace

blotched and wretched in their

weather-wrinkled skin.

By hot winds harassed

they silently struggle

to hold up each other

as they bend to the curb.

They have never spun or toiled

Yet their sun-dried skin is soiled.

Ten naked ladies left their bones on the terrace

dry broken reeds at

the edge of the pool.

The life that they cherished

gone to smoke like the grass.

The dance and the struggle

reduced to the rattle—

like old gossips’ prattle—

of dry broken reeds.

                               

Consider the lilies.

                               

*Amaryllis Belladonna--a variety of lily which gardeners call naked ladies because the flowers bloom on stems that have no surrounding leaves.