| The bonsai tree in the attractive pot could have grown eighty feet tall on the side of a mountain till split by lightning. But a gardener carefully pruned it. It is nine inches high. Every day as he whittles back the branches the gardener croons, It is your nature to be small and cozy, domestic and weak; how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in. With living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth: the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers, the hands you love to touch. |
| A Work of Artifice |
| Marge Piercy |