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
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.
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:
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!
wow. I held my breath all the way down.
Lovely feel of mystery to it, just like being a scientist, revealing information piece, or word, by word.
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
Great poem, Mary.
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.
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"
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
I was totally sucked in. Dating "Flores" that would be Cougar Maximus!
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