LOOKING BACK

When my hand was very small my mother whose fingers,
fragrant with lavender and roses, wore amber, carnelian,
coral, turquoise, silver, clasped my small hand and led me
through the night market. She told me peacocks, falcons,
leopards, gazelles, even women brought on the Silk Road
were once bought there. We wanted mulberries, grapes
and pears and more. Her bracelets of thick jade, carved ivory, heavy
over her hands clanked as she chose melons. We watched
the merchant, thick knife's inscribed silver blade, slice
the melon's end for men to drink its juice, as the stars swirled
around like dancing-girls. On a twisty path between stalls 
called "Snake Alley" we saw a snake handler slice, chop, throw
the flesh on greased pan over sizzling fire, watched men skewer
and eat it, drinking small glasses of blood..
"The secret powers of men, they drink snake venom for
sexual prowess," she said,"they keep strong to rule the world,"
she said, drawing the silk cloth closer across her face.
The two old servants behind us muffle-laughed men are useful,
bring bracelets, give babies. We weren't supposed to hear.
"If we stay here," she murmured to me, "you'll be given in
marriage when you are 12." I was very small, no more then
waist high to men crowding the market, smelling of musk and
sweat when we walked past unseen, covered, with fruit baskets
protected by servants following, back through streets of carved
limestone, granite, marble, scrolled iron-barred windows,
I wondered if she would really sell her bracelets and rings and
we would go to another country, if there was such a place.
I was small but not too small to understand men must have
secret powers to rule the world.
At night in my dreams snakes hissed, writhed, sizzled,
snakes hung in lengths from their market hooks dripping venom,
while I prayed one I feared, would never enter my bed.


by Mary Rudge
(Poem received Award at the California Federation of
Chaparral Poets Convention, 2004) and published by
Rattlesnake Press.