Solitude
By Jacqueline Lyons

I am only one I tell the wide
wrinkled woman at the shop,
holding up one pinkie finger
the way I've been taught
to explain I live alone, no
husband or children to cook for.
Ow-hle!she exclaims, a shame,
but smiles as she sells me the small
sack of flour, the half dozen eggs.
Men offer lobola, a dowry
of cows, girls say You could be
for my brother, I could teach you
to cook. Brave and strange
for living alone, a woman like me
would make a perfectly good wife.
My neighbors ask why climb
the back path alone -- dogs, they say,
do not count. Why not wear skirts
more often and why, when you know
Basotho people, ever be alone.

© Copyright 2004 by Jacqueline Lyons
excerpted from the longer poem "A Few Losotho Traditions"
originally appeared in The Way They Say Yes Here, Hanging Loose Press, 2004

The poems in Lyons' first collection grew out of three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho, Southern Africa. Her poems and essays have appeared in Calyx, Puerto del Sol, Hanging Loose, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and other publications.