Lucille Clifton

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Poet Lucille Clifton, one-time poet laureate of Maryland, died yesterday. If there's a better expression of how you feel as you grow old than "green tree in a forest of kindling" I don't know what it is.


There is a girl inside


There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

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