1/17/2001:
 
SAT-Practice Word of the Day: assuage
Intermediate Word of the Day: jejune
Difficult Word of the Day: collyrium
 

TO FLUFF, GROWN OLD

There are jungles in your eyes,
Green rain forests, heavy-hung
With orchids, where the serpent's tongue
Flickers across the sultry day
And storms of butterflies
Gather beneath acacia skies.

Half-awake and half-asleep,
You crouch upon the window sill,
A thousand thousand years beyond
The dim beginnings of your race.
Nothing splendid waits for you,
Nothing perilous and new.
You watch the shadow-minutes pass
Across the uneventful grass
And lift a fragile, silky paw
To speed the slow retreat of noon

But something of that time and place,
A world away, is written still
Beneath your lazy, narrowed lids,
And in the jungles of your eyes
The yellow storms, descending, break
And scatter, while the dappled snake
Uncoils among the dappled weeds
And temporarily concedes
To naked fang and naked claw.

        --"Window to the South."
                  Vivian Smallwood