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Poems

Chapter 37: She is Overheard Singing
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About This Book

This collection gathers lyrical poems that move between expansive meditations and concentrated sonnets, exploring awe, longing, and the burdens of compassion. Recurring subjects include nature, seasonal change, mortality, and desire, with vivid images of orchards, sea, and city life anchoring philosophical reflection. The volume alternates long narrative-lyric pieces with brief, tightly crafted songs and sonnets, shifting from exuberant, declarative lines to quiet elegiac tones. Organized in sections that vary in mood and form, the work emphasizes emotional immediacy, formal variety, and an attentive speaker negotiating self, other, and the natural world.

She is Overheard Singing

Oh, Prue she has a patient man,
And Joan a gentle lover,
And Agatha’s Arth’ is a hug-the-hearth,—
But my true love’s a rover!
Mig, her man’s as good as cheese
And honest as a briar,
Sue tells her love what he’s thinking of,—
But my dear lad’s a liar!
Oh, Sue and Prue and Agatha
Are thick with Mig and Joan!
They bite their threads and shake their heads
And gnaw my name like a bone;
And Prue says, “Mine’s a patient man,
As never snaps me up,”
And Agatha, “Arth’ is a hug-the-hearth,
Could live content in a cup;”
Sue’s man’s mind is like good jell—
All one colour, and clear—
And Mig’s no call to think at all
What’s to come next year,
While Joan makes boast of a gentle lad,
That’s troubled with that and this;—
But they all would give the life they live
For a look from the man I kiss!
Cold he slants his eyes about,
And few enough’s his choice,—
Though he’d slip me clean for a nun, or a queen,
Or a beggar with knots in her voice,—
And Agatha will turn awake
When her good man sleeps sound,
And Mig and Sue and Joan and Prue
Will hear the clock strike round;
For Prue she has a patient man,
As asks not when or why,
And Mig and Sue have naught to do
But peep who’s passing by,
Joan is paired with a putterer
That bastes and tastes and salts,
And Agatha’s Arth’ is a hug-the-hearth,—
But my true love is false!