Two Cries while Serving Tea in an 18th Century Miniature

    I.  To My Master

Caught, I am, in servitude
Miniaturized as one
in Orient’s multitude
I am your slave to serve tea.

“Tread quietly!  Do not disturb!”
So you command.
Color given only to my shoes.
Only my outline given form,
My self to disappear into the paper

You have had me framed
in colors gay and floral
But your heavy black vines
are placed to imprison me.

I shall protest once more.

II. To my Creator

You, with the power to create a universe

as God have drawn me into servitude

yet pretending to art’s neutrality.

Giving color to the flowers and even

the lowly shoes on my feet

you drew me caught and bland,

to blend as ochre

into the paper as if I, a woman

am to disappear, becoming wall paper

for life’s passings by.  What have you

caught with the heavy vines,

if not man’s oppression?