Change Everything

In your dreams, you see her
Tall, broad brow, narrow chin
Strong shoulders, square teeth,
The names of international leaders
tripping off her tongue.

Straight to the college
her Daddy graduated, finished
in three and half, played the cello
and once sang in the opera. Somewhere
in her lineage is a member of the DAR.

Graduate school at 22. Ph.D.
at 25. During the summers,
she volunteered at the therapeutic
riding camp, fed Biafra, saved
the whales, saw a dermatologist.

But you are cut from thinner cloth,
a world of untidy lineage, of a
firm grip, narrow, slipping
unnoticed behind the chair, feasting
on the image of his
hand holding her elbow.