She was a poetry book with
the wrong dust jacket,
shelved in the Reference section.
And in her lines everyone could find
what they were looking for —
geography, psychology, medicine
history, philosophy, art
Because she had lived a life
in all twenty seasons
of the world.
Yet every time she got taken off
to go home with someone new,
stay a week or two on a coffee table,
in a leather bag, or splayed open
on a writing desk,
attending a meeting or a class,
listening in on discussions
of politics, economics and
the intricate reasonings of law,
she knew in her heart she was
misplaced.
There is an old piece of wisdom
that tells how a book ought not
to be judged, yet
it wasn’t anyone’s fault that she
became whatever they needed her to be
and fooled them with great success, for
it was easier that way.
Unhappy readers are often known to
hurl a book across a room in anger,
ripping pages, breaking spines
all for not finding in its lines
what they were looking for.
And that’s what it was
for her all this time —
survival.
But what is this? A gust of wind
shakes off the lying coat
while she is left on the deck of a
boat and her companions walk ashore.
And they return with food and drink,
in a frenzy and eager to
leave for the next port.
They search for her, only to find
nothing but an empty sleeve.
“Find the body,” come the screams,
they climb the ropes and dive beneath
but she is nowhere to be seen —
misplaced, they thought, as
all that’s lost is sure to be.
Where on this boundless earth is she?
Where on this earth lives Poetry?
They didn’t know just how she looked
unless they tried to read the book
who has lived through
all the twenty seasons
of the world.