The Elder Woman
(and the content of her bags)
eight o’clock
night-shiver dark
a bow-legged
two times over mother
(mother’s mother)
walks past
short and unthin, brown
purse and umbrella slung
over her shoulder
with five market bags
inches from the
ground,
which couldn’t
get colder
five market bags
in one hand,
balanced by a purse
so stocked
one never knows
what one might find
and if you looked closely
(really closely)
you could see beyond
her market bags —
to the baskets full
from the guava fields
straw baskets brimming
with guava and papaya
or maybe barrels of water
I think to offer help
but before I act,
she flows past me
trudging absently,
as if to say it’s okay —
“I’ve carried heavier.”
— esm
“Old Lady and Shopping Bag” was photographed in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, by Builder Levy. I find the photograph magical. Her gaze beyond is unattached to what we see in the photographer’s lens — her own life lived, silent struggles endured, her no-nonsense strength and resilience. In this way, the photo brings to mind what one dear friend, Helene Grøn, has clued me into as the “silent labor” of womanhood.
I was grateful to discover Levy’s 1965 photo in pursuit of a cover image for my 2009 poem about another elder woman with bags. Though my subject was a South American in Union City NJ, I find that both women, like my own Armenian / East European-raised grandmother, are emblematic of universal womanhood. For our elders, then, and for women — a poem.
