a simple poem for Virginia Woolf

This started out as a simple poem

for Virginia Woolf you know the kind

we women writers write these days

in our own rooms

in our own time

a salute a gesture of friendship

a psychological debt

paid off

I wanted it simple

and perfect round

hard as an

egg I thought

only once I'd said egg

I thought of the smell

of bacon grease and dirty frying pans

and whether there were enough for breakfast

I couldn't help it

I wanted the poem to be carefree and easy

like children playing in the snow

I didn't mean to mention

the price of snowsuits or

how even on the most expensive ones

the zippers always snag

just when you're late for work

and trying to get the children

off to school on time

a straightforward poem

for Virginia Woolf that's all

I wanted really

not something tangled in

domestic life the way

Jane Austen's novels tangled

with her knitting her embroidery

whatever it was she hid them under

I didn't mean to go into all that

didn't intend to get confessional

and tell you how

every time I read a good poem

by a woman writer I'm always peeking

behind it trying to see

if she's still married

or has a lover at least

wanted to know what she did

with her kids while she wrote it

or whether she had any

and if she didn't if she'd chosen

not to or if she did did she

choose and why I didn't mean

to bother with that

And I certainly wasn't going

to tell you about the time

my best friend was sick in intensive care

and I went down to see her

but they wouldn't let me in

because I wasn't her husband

or her father her mother

I wasn't family

I was just her friend

and the friendship of women

wasn't mentioned in hospital policy

or how I went out and kicked

a dent in the fender of my car

and sat there crying because

if she died I wouldn't be able

to tell her how much I loved her

(though she didn't and we laugh

about it now) but that's what got me

started I suppose wanting to write

a gesture of friendship

for a woman for a woman writer

for Virginia Woolf

and thinking I could do it

easily separating the words

from the lives they come from

that's what a good poem should do

after all and I wasn't going to make excuses

for being a woman blaming years of silence

for leaving us

so much to say

This started out as a simple poem

for Virginia Woolf

it wasn't going to mention history

or choices or women's lives

the complexities of women's friendships

or the countless gritty details

of an ordinary woman's life

that never appear in poems at all

yet even as I write these words

those ordinary details intervene

between the poem I meant to write

and this one where the delicate faces

of my children faces of friends

of women I have never even seen

glow on the blank pages

and deeper than any silence

press around me

waiting their turn

Poem by Kingston Ontario poet Bronwen Wallace  (1945-1989)
Paintings of the island she looked at in Lake of the Woods near Morson Northwestern Ontario by Pauline Johnson (1927-2007) (my mother)