Indian Women

In this triple-baked continent

Women don’t etch angry eyebrows

On mud walls.

Patiently they sit

Like empty pitchers

On the mouth of the village well

Pleating hope in each braid of their Mississippi-long hair

Looking deep into the water’s mirror

For the moisture in their eyes.

With zodiac doodlings on the sands

They guard their tattooed thighs

Waiting for their men’s return

Till even the shadows

Roll up their contours and are gone beyond the hills.