In Pacifica
I despise that portrait of me.
The likeness ends
with the name.
Yes, Jane Seymour, unbeheaded
Queen of England.
No, not of pinched thin lips
and sharp bird-beak nose.
Those hideous wimples
tented on over plucked foreheads
displaying protruding toad eyes....
I was not the smoldering gypsy beauty
of Anne Boleyn
nor the loud, youthful
excess of everything
Katherine Howard
but look what their beauty cost them:
one head apiece.
I was pretty in my watchful, rich-wombed way.
I carried a King in my devoted belly
and a great love for my cousin-husband,
a fondness for estranged young Mary
and a fervent wish for peace.
I carried the scent of my beloved garden
sweet forsythia
nor the harlot’s stink of
Paris and promiscuity.
I was loathe to undergo
a coronation
I did not want to be Queen
and yet here I am,
the only wife to receive a queen’s funeral
and share a tomb
with the Beheader.
Categories:
wimples, history,
Form: Free verse
The sisters passed
in the garden
on the way to chapel,
their heads bowed,
their voices hushed,
faced concealed
by wimples
stiff as cones
in the twilight.
The evening bell tolled,
peaceful and reverent
as an affirmation,
ancient
as the stone walls
dressing in their habits,
as brides donning green.
Soon all was quiet;
no more rustling
of fabric.
Impoverished and chaste
their prayers went
to God,
these obedient daughters
of charity.
Straight-backed
in their rude pews,
their heads bowed
still further,
they gave thanks
for a beauty
of which they felt themselves
undeserving.
Categories:
wimples, garden, nature,
Form: Personification