Offering Poem by Dianne Feaver

India is a girl out in the sun
walking the earth, quietly singing
of water and bread,
the only one casting no shadow,
the only one hearing no sound
not even her own graceful step

though the bells on her ankles

offer bright music.


She is mute.

No language exists 
but that of brown skin 

wrapped in colours her ancestors wore

to pray for the path, to work for her life, 

to labour and strive until her feet
begin
 to follow the curve of her hand.

How she will grow!
Her beauty, 
no less than a gift, a cast of fortune,
a wife, a child, a home the singular duty

of a girl out in the sun.