Miranda's been running
in circles
up, over, around, under everyone
she meets, like one of those steam rollers
you see everywhere these days,
every city getting new streets
with all of us caught in the jam.
But this isn't about streets
unless it's those long, dark ones,
winding further and further
into the scrub pine, the forests
we don't go into, the ones
that sprout at nothing more
than a dead end.
It's not as if she doesn't know it,
can,t see herself as she races
from project to project, like the way she cooks,
all the dishes going at the same time,
stirring here, slicing there.
She watches herself all the time.
She's tried to change,
at least she's thought about it
chided herself for being too blunt,
too talkative, too self-centered
all the adjectives for over bearing,
but Miranda has no time.
She needs space to script a life,
find a role to emulate,
make new costumes, shape
new masks, paint and feather,
try them on, rehearse,
feel comfortable again.
Perhaps a Southern sensibility,
all slow honey in its own sweet time,
a long drawl that demands attention,
deliberate pace, as if weighty, thinking.
Miranda tries on white gloves,
but prefers her raw, hard hands.
Northern intellectual, she thinks,
long sweaters and glasses,
enroll in post doctoral work,
go for a Ph.D. in Comparative Lit.,
a Fulbright to Albania,
read critical reviews for fun.
But she's already myopic,
and she doesn't speak Albanian.
She is what she is:
A transplanted Midwesterner
living in a southern town
that thinks it's not.
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