Lionized

Free Verse Poem by Margaret D. Stetz

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he mounted
the undusted stairs
to that studio
where sofa and bed folded
into each other’s arms
she followed eagerly
You’ve bearded me in my den
he sighed
naming her as the hunter
yes she was hunting
trophies
those towers of books
swaying vertiginously
in every corner like
the skyline of Manhattan
she hoped to embrace
MOMA/the Met/Lincoln Center
when he held her
the hotplate next to the bathroom
where he folded a perfect omelet
her tongue on his lips
licking the taste
of Paris
(and in winter didn’t he wear
a beret
with his trench coat?)
As The Poet says
his vowels carved by London
he quoted
Hopkins/Browning/Tennyson
(was it a bad sign, that line from “Tithonus”
about being immortal
but old
too old?)
it was her mistake
to think she was
Jo March/Jane Eyre/Dorothea Brooke
she wanted to climb
into bed with
the 42nd Street Library
but young
too young
for life in the stacks
for statuesque
calm
too impatient for Patience
too flighty for Fortitude
for boredom
induced by quotations
Let us go then, you and I
he often repeated
but stayed
like a weathered sculpture
affixed to its plinth
when she
woke and
left.

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Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware, as well as a widely published poet. She has spent her life teaching and writing about literature, but still finds it hard to reconcile academia with the world she knew as a working-class girl in Queens, New York.