Women’s Table by Maya Lin

In “The Last Super” Jesus and his disciples

are lined up like they were getting ready

for a photograph and in “Knights of the Round

Table” the guys are all decked out in fancy robes.

But who comes to this table are women.

And how miraculous the mind of the woman

who made a wailing wall of Vietnam

a saucer of martyrs for Civil Rights

a wave field to honor the ocean.

Here on this smooth round green granite

is the spiral count of women etched in stone

who have graduated from Yale.

From a singularity, a long sequence of zeros

beginning in 1701 slowly scrolls around and upward

to prime 13 and progresses to 4,947 in 1992.

Future dates remain uncounted and unrecorded

although in the fall of 2018 flowers appeared

in mourning when a rapist was confirmed

as a justice on the Supreme Court.

Each number represents a real woman

not a “silent listener” (those long zeroes…)

a woman who had become a member of the club.