Literary and Confectionary

Spinster

“Now this particular girl During a ceremonious April walk With her latest suitor Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck By the birds irregular babel And the leaves’ litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she Observed her lover’s gestures unbalance the air, Her gait stray uneven Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower. She judged petals in disarray, The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! — Scrupulously austere in its order Of white and black Ice and rock, each sentiment in border, And heart’s frosty discipline Exact as a snowflake.

But here — a burgeoning Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits Into vulgar motley — A treason not to be borne. Let idiots Reel giddy in bedlam spring: She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set Such a barricade of barb and check Against mutinous weather As no mere insurgent man could hope to break With curse, fist, threat Or love, either.”