Kerry Hardie

Red Houses
for Frances

There are in this country, off small roads in darkness,
certain red houses.
Not the red of blood but the red of fire:
red from the red women who live in them.

I have been in one such house.
There was nothing special, nothing to show.
The wooden gates stood open, the dogs were in,
and on the raw concrete steps a bicycle

sprawled on its side in the thick black night air
that laid its wet finger to my face. Inside
the dark-haired red woman-of-the-house
stood by the table, pulled all eyes to her, and it was not

what she said, or did, or looked like, but the place
she drew her life from (some old ferned well
whose whereabouts I did not know) which so tuned her
that she glowed the house.

Fear for the children of such women,
especially the sons. For if they miss
the moment when it might be possible
to make the thing over again

they will spend their lives searching
through people and countries
and nowhere will they find again the red house
with the red heart in the soft black rainy night.