SOMETHING DIFFERENT

(There are two basic kinds of girl:

those who want to be a princess;

and those who want to be a pioneer.)

On a frozen winter evening

In a barn down at the dairy

Sits a maiden on a tall stool

Dressed in jeans and rubber boots.

In her hand she has a copy

Of a National Geographic

Which she reads in stolen moments

From her labors cold and wearing

Midst the smell of fresh manure,

And the pulsing sound of milkers

While the Holsteins chew their barley.

There between the yellow covers

Is the story of far travel:

Down a river called Zambezi

Sixteen hundred miles of water

From Zambia to Namibia

Round the corner to Botswana

Back to Zambia, past Zimbabwe

Over vast Victoria Falls.

Mozambique, then to the ocean

Rolls the river of Zambezi

Full of snorting, lumpy hippos.

There dwell baboons, snakes (black mambas)

Elephants, oxpeckers, catfish.

Crocodiles yawn in the shadows.

Cormorants fly overhead.

There the people fish the channels,

Paddle canoes full of cargo

As they have for generations

To the towns along the river

Where, “To travel is to dance.”

Soon the maiden at the dairy

Puts away her hasty reading,

Goes back to the heavy Holsteins;

Washes warm and steaming udders

While the motor of the milkers

And the country music station

Accompanies her wishing

To do something in her lifetime

That few women ever do.

E. Black