I’m currently reading Sri Lankan Catholic theologian Tissa Balasuriya’s Mary and Human Liberation and will no doubt blog about it in the next few days. But I’ve got to write a sonnet today, and a striking conjunction of my reading with what was happening around me seemed a good subject.
Sonnet 13: Bus stop incident
Tertullian, father of the church,
said,’Woman, you’re the devil’s gate,’
thereby leaving in the lurch
these young ones with whom I wait
near A’dale North Hotel. They toss
their shampooed manes of subtle gloss
and tug (here I avert my eyes)
on skirts that barely reach their thighs,
a generation’s uniform.
One’s loud, annoying, on her phone.
A gust of wind, a change of tone.
She cries like one caught in a storm
but cheerful as a lion cub:
‘Oh Jesus, I’ve just flashed the pub!’
Me fail? I fly! 