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Armour's the jewel for me of them all. |
Anyway, a good long while before I wrote the Jewel, I was so intrigued by the notion of drizzlers that I wrote a poem in the persona of one of them. I thought you might like to read it, so here it is.
THE
DRIZZLER
The play’s
the place for this game,
crowded
halls, assemblies, balls.
I keep a
pair of scissors in my
needle
case, birds of steel, their
beaks as
sharp as my tongue and
a spool
for winding my booty on.
My skirts
are a garden,
how my
nimble needle flies.
A froth of
smuggled lace at my wrist
hides my
hand from prying eyes.
Peacocks
are my prey.
Rich young
men or old no matter
so long as
their coats are fancy.
Roses,
purls and picots are good,
dangling
spangles are easy,
acorns are
fine, fringes are better
but I have
grown so bold that
I have
slit silver buttons from their
waistcoats
beneath their noses
and I
remember one young buck who
wore
medallions of beaten gold
with
cupids and I had them I had them but
I was
sorry to send such cherubs for melting.
Some women
call their pillage flirtation.
What can
their gallants do but submit?
But the
covert assault excites me more.
I gauge
them from behind my fan.
Up close,
their hearts beat far too loud to
hear the
slice of blade on blade.
They never
see my work.
They’re
watching the shady cleft
between my
breasts, they never catch
the
swiftness of my hand
between
their baubles but
with their
warm lips on mine
I’ll palm
my shears and
clip their
treasures one by one.
My mother
died when I was
much too young
to grieve.
My father
pays lip service to thrift while
donning
his powdered wigs, his velvets,
his hose,
his ruffled linen shirts.
So I’ll
take what’s offered elsewhere
snipping
in secret, concealing my
rich
pickings in my sleeve.
Later,
I’ll tease my stolen gold from
silken
thread and take it to the old woman
who weighs
it on her scales and
hands me a
few coins instead.
Pin money.
It’s never enough
but the
thought of this subtle robbery
makes me
flush and catch my breath.
I’ll prick
their vanity with my tiny shears.
A small
piracy.
We are
drizzlers.
We are
buccaneers.