Destiny
By Lynn D. Gilbert
July 15, 2024
July 15, 2024
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A tall wading bird, the teacher
was red-haired, thin, slightly stoop-shouldered, as often with tall men. Although a coach, he taught physics; he defied the stereotype of coaches teaching English or history. We girls took biology and chemistry; we’d need them in nursing or home ec. Some of us did math beyond plane geometry. But no girl in my class took physics. Not one. Any girl in physics class in our school would have been a nymphomaniac, though we didn’t know the word. Amid the hollow crash of locker doors, no physics texts for girls; in the dusty, crowded hallways, amid the shuffle and dodge of traffic, none of us walked to that room. We’d have to have been as bold as Beverley—though she was too dumb for physics—who frizzed and bleached her hair, wore a cross on a chain, and pierced her ears. Probably she smoked! Our hair was smooth. Around the neck we wore knotted scarves, small and folded on the diagonal, or a single strand of graduated pearls. We knew where we were headed: good moms who taught school, so as to be ‘off’ in summer, when the kids were out. Nurses, librarians, social workers. Secretaries who’d later assist in their husbands’ business. None of our static destinies required acquaintance with the laws of motion or a vision of the dark and empty universe studded here and there with flickering stars like buttons in tufted upholstery, or wayward comets sweeping paths like a wet mop across a kitchen floor. |
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Lynn D. Gilbert's poems have appeared in Arboreal, Blue Unicorn, Consequence, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Sheepshead Review, Southwestern American Literature, and elsewhere. Her poetry volume has been a finalist in the Gerald Cable and Off the Grid Press book contests. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in a suburb of Austin and reads poetry submissions for Third Wednesday journal.
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Author’s Note:
These two poems both illustrate how excluded I feel from understanding physics and how much I wish I were not. Being able to use my imagination in other contexts is some consolation. I'm also very pleased that STEAM subjects are much more open today--both socially and psychologically--to girls/women than when I was young. My daughter is a professor of applied mathematics at Yale and collaborates with colleagues in electrical engineering, computer science, statistics, even information science.