Take her, single in the stacks,
that melancholy teenage lass,
reading and thinking by herself.
Fix, or lose her fast.
Alone she reads a travel book,
and wonders how the Highlands look.
The flash upon her inward eye
casts darkness o’er a foreign sky.

She hasn’t traveled much in realms
of old, in happy, far-off places,
(the Old World, pictured, overwhelms
and gradually erases
the tiny tour she’s really done)
nor taken English 101.
She wants to sing out loud and bold
or write a poem that starts, “Behold!”

Will no one tell me what she thinks?
Perhaps her thoughts encircle isles
or struggle round a stony Sphinx.
She reads and sighs, and smiles.
Or is it some more humble truth
that suits her ignorance and youth?
Somewhere she’s listed what she reads,
but who remembers what she needs?

Whate’er the book, the Reader dreamed
as if she never would come home.
Her journey wasn’t what it seemed,
and here she leaves this poem.
I graduated, packed and fled
and flew to someplace roofs are red.
And now I take her photograph
and keep it for my epitaph.

Born Free

The lioness Desire, who seems content
To rub against her bars, is well aware
Of neighboring gazelle, but finds their scent
Unsubtle. She’s not dangerously bored.

Yet what a mess she makes of elephant,
Or, past the snack bar, tiny antelope,
In dreams of wild behavior. She was meant
To chase and not be chased, and safely stored.

But Pussy, what are you without your pride?
You’re ruled by instinct: if by accident
You’re loosed, and go and get some goat outside,
You’ll only drag him home to feed your lord.