The Sisters

In the vine-shadows on the veranda; under the yellow leaves, in the cooling sun, sit two sisters. Their slow voices run like little winter creeks, dwindled by frost and wind, and the square of sunlight moves on the veranda. They remember the gay young men on their tall horses who came courting; the dancing and the smells of leather and wine, the girls whispering by the fire together; even their dolls and ponies, all they have left behind moves in the yellow shadows on the veranda. Thinking of their lives apart and the men they married thinking of the marriage-bed and the birth of their first child, they look down smiling. “My life was wide and wild, and who can know my heart? There in that golden jungle I walk alone,” say the old sisters on the veranda.