The Choice

(On April 17, 1979, six years after Roe v Wade, a choice is made that never would have been possible before 1973 in the United States of America.)

by Susan Fox

This is the hoarfrosted moment – bare and sinister;

it chokes a freckled young woman,

dark-haired and beautiful with child.

The day is ugly with torment

and a certain disposable mentality

seeps through the cracks of the sidewalk,

recalling days without nights.

The air is blue gray

as she pulls another drag of happiness,

walking with a bitter finality

to a certain and undisclosed destination.

Her mother is ashamed.

She would whitewash the moment,

send her to a man in a white coat.

The knife is sharp and indifferent.

And the roommate?

She would send the moment away,

put it on a speeding train to infinity,

never say the one word that should be spoken:

“Stop.”

Gnawing on the Bone

We are all such cowards;

unwilling to touch the guilt –

an ugly thing gnawing on our bones.

And the boy?

Well, he is concerned

with economics

and “social responsibility.”

The cash register rings loudly

in the icy silence

while his son is delivered  

into a pool of blood.

Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014, the Catholic Church recognizes a Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children. 

See also  Reasons for Abortion: Fear Tops the List  

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 

She Lost An Earring!

(Phoebe is one of my closest friends. We were roommates in graduate school. This was written in the late '70s)
by Susan Fox

Tonight,

you opened the window,

surrendered your most difficult thoughts

to the seduction of the violin.

Jerky angle of legs and arms in victory fisted,

Phoebe, tonight, I saw you square dance gladness,

rise above the staring clouds,

driven to the rapture of the open sky.

The trees roared and clapped their branches.

Clouds, eyebrows raised,

disinterestedly drifted by,

and I, helpless,

ran back and forth

like an insect struck by celestial pandemonium.

Later,

the wind left you on a cold square of earth;

it scattered each of your most precious thoughts.

Dear, I could not retrieve them,

so we went home in a funeral march,

not a rendering of Elton.

Now, there is a short blast of wind

and you abandon your soul

to a pile of leaves;

they cackle with black premonition.

In me, there is a frightened squirrel,

running the obvious circles

around an old cage.

In you, there is a thorny well

filled with vain regrets.

I’ve looked for your windows

but they are always open to the black sky,

the vicious and eternal night.