MOUNT VERNON, et al

(written in 1978 on Spring Break with my friend Helena. We visited Mount Vernon and Gunston Hall both in Northern Virginia)

by Susan Fox

Helena and I

climb up towards

Martha and George;

crocuses peer at us

from newly unfrozen ground;

spring announcing the summer,

trumpets through the trees

and we are weeping for their lives together:

“A Victorian marriage,”

you say,

“with all its respect

and male prerogatives.”

In passing the master bedroom,

we wonder

       “Were they happy together?”

We stop giggling at the tomb;

the parents of our country

lie side-by-side

in death, if not in life;

the secret of their lives is buried there

and nothing is revealed to us.

Later, at Gunston Hall,

after a pony ride,

we would be ladies too,

strolling only on a manicured lawn,

wearing a long white dress,

sewing, writing,

waiting to be married.

Look out on the Chesapeake,

Helena, the wind brings in another sail,

and time beaches us at Mount Vernon

where we can forget our careers,

pretend to be girls, unburdened and genteel.

But we are not ladies, we are working women,

running through our lives

in heels, with notepads –

Only once do we glance back down the Potomac

to see what might have been:

two young girls, one dark, one blond

strolling through a formal garden

at ease in their own gentle living.

Helena in life there is only time,

if we can find it. 

The Potomac River