From Feste's Self-Help Book

By Elise Partridge
Childhood
 
You came into this world trailing clouds all right,
               they just happened to be big black ones.
In the castle you drank from a poisoned goblet
               and were changed into something even bears cringe at.
When you awake baling-wired in thorns,
viceroys around you cobwebbed to their steins,
moth-eaten ermines, a muttering king—
                                               what choice do you have?
Rappel down the turret with your cap and bells.


Adolescence

Handed a baton in a bad-luck relay,
you've overshot the cliff and are pinwheeling down,
flailing in time to that whistling-wind keening
that lets viewers know you will soon be compressed
under a subsequent sequence of rocks.
                                               Squashed into pleats a centimeter wide?
Stride till you're 3-D again.
 

Adulthood
 
You're staggering through a dark wood,
soundtrack a fugue.
 
                                               Remember wrens risk a hand for a single seed,
                                               orchids can sprout from duff alone.
 

Executive Summary

How many can you feed from your sourdough lumps?
                                               Each morning, braid a loaf. Give them away.
Copyright Credit: Elise Partridge, "From Feste’s Self-Help Book" from Chameleon Hours. Copyright © 2008 by Elise Partridge.  Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source: Chameleon Hours (University of Chicago Press, 2008)