Girl With Mirror

Subservient and meek, she turns away.
Only a half of all her beauty can be seen,
and yet she watches us and is the queen
of all she sees-of all we see. And say,
she turned her head and looked our way,
what would we find in her?  The lean
face o f a geisha.  Some child in her teens?
Perhaps she is my mother on the day
she was betrothed to take my father's hand.
She could be Oyei, years beyond me, fair,
married or ripe with child, or dressed in black,
but no, she's turned, and that is how she plans
to curse us with her, tightly bundled hair
which never falls, forever down her back,