Sunday 16 August 2015

Silent, Their Men Stand By


Dear Reader,




My husband, Geoffrey, and I were staying in Marrakech, Morocco, on holiday a few summers ago.  We had a bedroom and bathroom in a small house in the hotel grounds which was cleaned by two women from the district.  They spoke absolutely no english and I speak absolutely no moroccan
but we made ourselves understood with laughter and signs and, as we left, a hug or two.  On return to England I wrote the following poem.




Silent, Their Men Stand By

as universal woman talks
with women
who are not friends,
or neighbours,
or women they know or love,
just women.

Their bonding thread
is laughter, touch, glance, cry,
instant understanding.

While silent, mystified, their men stand by.

                         *

A musing this week.

I really do not like August weather,  this last week has been terrible.  Either I am fetching another cardigan because it has become so cold, or I am taking off the said cardigan and feeling much too hot, and it is all the fault, I think, of the humidity.  Jane Austen said whilst staying in Kent in 1796 : "What dreadful hot weather we have! - It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance".  So I have been in a "state of inelegance" all this last week, don't like it, and much look forward to September.

Best wishes, Patricia

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