In urgent dress, the young clerk
holds a reddish
rag up to his nose and
paces
seated and intense-
ly through collected
poems of So-And-So—
while outside tawny
throngs of finches
leapfrog
up splayed branches of
an old resplendent
ever-
green that's framed in by
his window,
chiding—
Say son, why're you
being such
a sissy this morning—nursing a bloody
nose there, popping
pimples in your office
chair? What's wrong—You scared?
to death of a little
simple height? Or is it maybe
more like
sore-
afraid to lose a little depth!
