High Praise

One September night, too cold for outdoor wine,
I sat with two good friends and watched the street.
The glasses fogged beneath the streetlamp’s shine,
The air was sharp, the talk was slow and sweet.

At some point I said, laughing as I spoke,
“You sound exactly like my father now.”
You asked how he was doing at the joke,
I said he worries over grades somehow.

“Has he so little faith in you?” you said.
No—he thinks I’m a very capable woman
Not quite a capable person, you see.
You nodded then. The answer sounded common.

If woman bars the gate where persons start,
Then someone wrote the human wrong in part.