Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Tuesday Poem: Dating

it was so long ago
now

she was small
with slender
calves and
a different
way of walking

it’s hard to put
a face to her,
but she was
certainly
small-featured 
with deep-set
eyes, I
couldn’t be
sure of the
colour

she wasn’t
blessed
with brains
but  was
bright enough

definitely
low-brow
rather than
high

I can’t say
how
she used 
her time,
cooking springs
to mind

she'd have
caught
your eye
a girl like
that

made you
think again
about that thing
of God’s
own image

she was quite
a find all right

what
I know
for sure
is that 
Flores
   (not her
real name)
is eighteen
thousand
years old

on that, 
thanks to
carbon, I
can be
fairly exact



Mary McCallum


Remember Flores? Check out more fabulous Tuesday Poems. Janet Frame's poem 'Poets' is at the hub and from there you can visit another thirty poets with poems from Rilke to Diane Brown. Just click on the quill in the sidebar. 

9 comments:

Kathleen Jones said...

Lovely poem Mary. I like the surprise at the end. Also the way the poem is structured on the page - like a tall, thin person!

TK Roxborogh said...

wow. I held my breath all the way down.

Rachel Fenton said...

Lovely feel of mystery to it, just like being a scientist, revealing information piece, or word, by word.

Claire Beynon said...

A feeling of mystery, yes, Mary. I love the tender ambiguity of the title, too - Dating. We meet Flores in many more ways than one. Thank you. xo

Helen Lowe said...

Great poem, Mary.

Melissa Green said...

Very fine, Mary. How real she is, how sure we too have seen a girl 'like her' before we know what she is truly like. The voice convinces us we would know her--and then the eye-opening ending that silences us completely. Great.

Catherine said...

Lovely surprise, which had me thinking again about our prehistoric ancestors as real people - especially your line "she'd have caught your eye a girl like that"

AJ Ponder said...

Nice playful piece Mary -
I especially liked the way it was all tied in so neatly and humorously at the end - approx 18,000 years... on that I can be fairly exact-
:D

Ben Hur said...

I was totally sucked in. Dating "Flores" that would be Cougar Maximus!