Her food and water live across the room.
She has a thought. She lifts her nose. She measures
and weighs effort and risk, her hunger’s bloom,
the long, slick floor between her and her pleasures,
and then decides. Long stretches—fore, then hind—
and she sets off, her stiff legs under control,
eyes on the prize, just one thing on her mind.
Listing only slightly, she reaches the goal—
—and then just stands there, rueful and perplexed,
inches from Paradise without a clue.
She sits. She stares at the wall, not sure what’s next,
how she has come there, what she had meant to do.
Jane Greer
Jane Greer edited Plains Poetry Journal and is author of Bathsheba on the Third Day (The Cummington Press). Her new book of poems, Love like a Conflagration, will be published this spring by Lambing Press.
Latest posts by Jane Greer (see all)
- Old Dog - February 9, 2020
- Greatness, Marginalization, and an Endangered Species: Dana Gioia’s The Catholic Writer Today and Other Essays - February 7, 2020
- After the Fall - September 24, 2019
