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.