CHRISTINA’S WORLD

  

He labored on that wintry hill for months,

And contemplated her in her pink dress:

Her crippled arms and hands against the grass,

Just like a faded lobster shell or conch

You might find on a beach somewhere. Her strength

Has ebbed forever from the useless legs

That drag behind her, trailing like the dregs

Drained back into the bottle from one’s mouth.

 

She never reaches home across the field

That mocks her with the world’s infirmity

With which desire claws and crawls to be,

Yet faints before a gulf that is too wide

To conquer. Framed against the ashen sky,

The farmhouse stares away from what she feels.