It Takes a Villeinage

      This appeared in Plainsongs.

In high dudgeon, as horsehair crests exude
Manliness and confidence and ye olde
Tyme-iness, the warriors produce speeches,
Spontaneous and metrical and crammed
With tropes, the bridge across Antiquity
To Meriwether Lewis Junior High.
It doesn't span it, quite. Into the cleft
Fall sleeping children, doomed to curse and rail
Like Thersites and feofor-princes. Better
To be a live shoe salesman in the Loop
Than eloquent in school libraries, pent
On clammy shelves in dusty inglenooks
Where Edie strips and Bobby Millstone waits.