It was the autumn of my discontent
in New York City. I was twenty-one
with nothing to show but a resumé
of thin successes: sundry summer jobs,
a college-writing prize, four published poems
in a small journal edited by friends.
I got a job on 42nd Street
with Special Reports, Incorporated,
a series of newsletters that went out
to schools and libraries on hot topics.
I was put in charge of Special Reports:
Ecology and the new Women’s Issues,
which I manned from the tiny broom closet
called my office, from which I could see—
once the leaves fell—two lions reclining
before the public library. That fall
our bestseller, Special Reports: The World,
was full of news about the Vietnam war.
The blood-red oak leaves falling in the park
outside my window seemed sad mementos
of mounting casualties a world away,
and closer in the choices I had made.
Each day at noon, I’d race down to the street,
past protestors handing out peace buttons
and stale leaflets I’d pretend to read.
I ate a quick snack sitting on the steps
between the lions, wiped my greasy hands
on their stony manes, and still hungry,
I spent my lunch hour in the library,
feeding the poet starving inside me.