Bushes Of Old Girls Poem by Mohabeer Beeharry

They were prickly and thorny
Vicious
And virulently dark green.

But their blooms, of all colours
In clusters of yellow, red, white
Mixed yellow and red.

I loved them for the forbidden silence
That surrounded them
And the bees they attracted.

I often wondered at the amount of honeyed sweetness
That is lodged in their heart
That spun the bees in frenzy in the pleasant sunshine.
They are wrong who say that evil comes from the heart.

So I did not hate them.
Never!
It is wisdom told by nature.

On my adventures in the village woodland,
I did get scarred though
And scratched, but I did not cease, like bees
to sip honey from the hearts of their dazzling colours.

I used to enjoy this name,
Old girls,
A bit hurting though
As old unmarried women in the village were called old girls.

Not all of them were prickly
Or forbidding,
they chatted and giggled round the village well
And turned the children's games and laughs into electric pastimes.

At weddings,
No inhibitions, no problems
The first to cackle with jolly laughters,
Bare foot, skirts trussed up dancing,

Eyes glinting and filled with fun
like the water of translucent streams,
Shone with clean sincerity and abundance,
the first to start the carnivals, balls and jigging.
No one else dared!

They were not prickly either,
I thoroughly enjoyed the noise
The songs and tambourines,
The wildness in their dances and movements.

I wonder now
why like the other village girls they did not settle down.
That is the tragedy.

So much love,
Sheer bubbling sincerity and gaiety
Halos of infinite friendliness gone to waste.
Not a trace of pricks and pins like the wild bushes,
And yet failed to attract lasting friendship.

The mistakes were not in their beautiful sense of freedom,
Their sincere friendship
Or open heartiness,
But in the freakish judgement of the villagers
Whose price for empty ridiculous vanity the old girls paid.