Involutional Melancholia

That she'd rolled out of nothingness seemed queer,

but there was much to occupy her days,

and fiat lux exacted math and faith

magnitudes beyond imagining

even for a poet, which she was,

if only of a minor minor sort.



Home Ec and English Lit prepared her well.

She decked her hearth and pages in grand style --

bloom-heaped wicker's always a la mode --

and made the midnight sky a picture book

to ease her children into harmless dreams

of Little Bear, the Hunter and the Swan.



And when she lay her own self down to sleep

there was a snoring husband and slate-roof

to blot heaven's reproach. Yes, overall,

she earned the highest epithets for each

accomplice in her luminous triune

bright mind, radiant body, and warm soul.



She gave out all she could of heat and light,

rolled inward toward her cooling iron core,

and found the place her nature preordained

as just another burnt-out basket case

in the keyless vast asylum of her kind:

white dwarves, black holes and interstellar dust.



1990's