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 (1981-1993), an advance guard of the New Formalism movement. Her new book of poems is Love like a Conflagration (Lambing Press). She is the judge of the Catholic Literary Arts 2021 Sacred Poetry Contest.
Latest posts by Jane Greer (see all)
- Like Feathers - February 23, 2021
- Those Regency Novels - February 23, 2021
- Samuel Hazo at Ninety-two: Still Squaring Off with That Trickster, Time - February 21, 2021
