I SHOULD HAVE TREKKED WITH SCOTT TO ANTARCTICA

I should have trekked with Scott to Antarctica

and ditched my ghost there, so I’d be numb

as prairie ice by now, free from love’s arsenic

to-ing and fro-ing, my hope fitful as a swannery.

I should have lived heartsimple as a nun,

worn my habits like silk, said buckshot Hail Marys,

been exempt from the fiery greens of summer

and your gaze overflowing my saucer eyes.

I should have been a thermal, or the windage

in a breeze left by the swift absence of a nighthawk,

been immune to all the heady fret and vigil

when doubt sails cockeyed as an ice yacht.

Or I should have been a gypsy fit to besot you,

rivet you with spells, puzzle and haunt you,

ripe as a pomegranate, a sensual stampede,

not this plain young woman with an abstract need.