for Arielle
She may look healthy
but she is often hungry
and rubs her last pennies
thinking of baked beans,
bread rolls, and a harvest
of poems.
the city is what she wants to escape
for the country or the moors.
she imagines herself
bathing naked in a private grove
while the hot water runs
expensively for her bath
in her flat noisy with sirens and horns.
Words come to her
a sudden rainfall on a windowpane
and intense she composes
a love letter to woman
to men yet she prefers
to be by herself.
She feels rich
when she has paper and pen
she would not write
a novel on an inch of ivory
she worries about how to clean
the ocean
mostly she fears
the stranger at the door.
Anne Cimon, international copyright, 1990.