Women in White (poem)

You look so safe there,
standing in the green spring
of your folks' front lawn,
holding my small girl
in your arms--
two women in white,
a study in calculated
innocence.

Now, that small girl speaks to me
in the blond sentence
of her fifth year's wisdom,
out of her blue-eyed joy
with things forbidden.

And what of the aunt,
so stunning in white,
olive arms the compass
of a small girl;s world?
Stunned with a whisper
in white, an obscene
invitation
to some too-studied experience,
she moves to silent song,
her solitary grace unbinding.

In my silence, I wander
again and again
to this moment snapped
out of  time, to a dreamer's
image of two women in white,
their small plot of green.