The Cost of Education

Solitude, o solitude
In thine arms I rest.
Your love weighs ever-faithful
on my heavy-laden breast.

Solitude, my loyal friend,
steadfast, will never leave me.
For I seek truth and trust no thing,
and you are not deceiving.

Solitude, you're here to stay,
and the invitation's come from me.
For climbing up this tower high
leaves me with no company.

Because knowledge is your brother
and wisdom is your wife,
we've grown close the years I've lived with them
(Which is to say, my life).

So keep climbing with me (we can't stop now),
companion ever true,
to look out over tops of mountains,
where air is thin and friends are few.

Looking at You I Wonder

Looking at you,
I wonder if people ever ask themselves
what is going on inside that awful, lovely head of yours.
What wars are being fought in the trenches of its wrinkles and folds?
What nightmares lie in the depths of its seas,
beneath dormant volcanoes that time created?
What faces are etched in permanence, voices and names all but forgotten.
What sweet or bitter scents rekindle fires and storms...
What ancient melodies transport you to
a summer, an era, a love?
Looking at you,
I wonder.

I Contain Multitudes

I have within me
perhaps the president of a free nation.
(though dormant now),
within me lies a great somebody,
or a great many somebodies--
to surpass me.
A greater writer than me,
a better lover than me...
a farmer, a teacher, a father, a mother.

My body contains future bodies and future souls--
I contain multitudes.

I share with all fair-sexed creatures
the most base of instincts--
to choose a partner worthy.
What good and hearty man will raise these babes up
in the sunlight of my absence?
Who will help me to nurture these
future hungry spirits?

I contain the world within me,
and whatever remains of life that I cannot do myself,
I will have birthed babes to do them in my place.

I am a woman,
I contain multitudes.