It had seemed to her
that just as she was
getting used to summer
the tunnel of winter was
waiting to engulf
Seasons are unevenly distributed
The dark half always outweighs
She slumped into the beanbag chair
The gazebo in the yard was glistening with rain
Inside was
comfort but mustiness
brown walls, brown shelves
brown post-Vatican II habits
Sister Mary Francesca, brown as a hazelnut,
glowered from her desk
with eyes the diameter of a Smucker’s jar lid
Chastity and sweets
Chastity and sweets
make for a diabetic shuffling on her feet
Intoning sterility
life’s vocation, life-in-death
Our Lady of Perpetual Coffee Breath
It had seemed to her
that unobtrusive treasures beckoned
from their crisp, cellophane jackets
Discovered by happenstance
during last week’s study hall meandering
Not for her the glossy, pedestrian pages of Seventeen
Life’s kernels of wisdom embedded in the annals
of ancient history and modernist philosophy
she thought it odd that they shared the same shelving space
Who knew that Isaac Asimov wrote about the Romans?
Heidegger, Sartre, Camus
Apuleius and Catullus
Her breasts heaved at the recall
She rose from her seat, punctuated by
brief crunch sound
the ass imprint augured nothing
Not much time before
the homeroom bell summons sounded
to drift in a sea of vacuity
as the preppies and the sluts
the metal-heads and the new-wavers
all with their signature shortened skirts
and poofy do’s
careened past her in the halls
She perused Asimov’s account of the Punic Wars
and felt a strange expansiveness of soul
Unprecedented advances, schemes and counter-schemes,
decision and failure, risk and success
And to the untold herds of elephants
the certainty that the
Seasons are unevenly distributed
The dark half always outweighs.
She fought back bitter tears.
