An anguished figure on a hill,
her knees scuffed, her dress torn,
a dented bucket empty in her hand.
I look in my book to see if the text
I remembered from childhood and
my more seasoned adult imagination,
could come into agreement.
I discovered Jack and the well.
Both were in the text.
but not my mind’s eye.
A critical detail known by conjecture,
not the text. The hill was alarmingly steep.
Nearby, a young shepherdess named Bo Peep
engrossed in contemplation looked up to discover
her entire flock of ruminants had wandered off.
From textual analysis we can surmise
she was short in stature, an outdoors type,
and a pastoral feminist,
a woman striking out in a man’s world.
I would have expected a desperate search to ensue.
all the while Bo rehearsing the sharp rebuke she was
sure to receive from the man who owned the sheep
when she returned to report the loss.
But the narrative tells us otherwise.
The shepherdess exudes aptitude and confidence.
Perhaps she is a frequenter of used bookstores,
and having come across a dog-eared copy of the
Tao Te Ching, she purchased and read the book
from which she gained a go-with-the-flow Taoist
point of view.
Unlike the female protagonist on the hill, pacing
in stunned ineptitude over her Aquarian comrade,
attempting to reverse time, making what just occurred
seem not to have happened at all,
Bo Peep does not try to push the river uphill.
She lets. She allows.
She goes home.
Three days later, high over a hill,
vultures circled something tragic
that appealed to their appetites.