After teaching at Wuhan University in China in collaboration with Ohio State the summer of 2006, I took a trip through the Three Gorges with my American colleagues, teachers, many of whom were young women finishing up their MAs and starting their PhDs in Linguistics, or TESOL, or Language Acquisition. We had just spent an intense month together; our students were among China’s brightest, the future doctors, scientists, movers and shakers, and they had kept us all busy with adulatory attention 24/7. Now was the time for relaxing on the Yangtze. One day, as I watched my young female companions lounging on the deck, I had to get out my pen and write a sonnet about them.
136
The world is full of beautiful women
Who are fertile and ready for love. Look.
Anita rests. Tara’s stretched on the deck
Hands on tummy flattened breast as the gorge
Opens and allows us to pass. Audrey
Sits with her dark eyes looking straight ahead
Christine with her back to what’s coming is
Looking back to what has been. Theresa
Plays cards. Adelia’s falling asleep.
The sun and passing mountain seem to be
Leaning on each other the way Amy
And Alyssa do just now reading books.
Sharon, let down your hair for us to see
The warm breeze blow through it. Where is Annie?