Caged:  On My Last Sweetheart

            That’s my last girlfriend pictured on the desk,
            Profusely smiling in her thin, white dress.
            I snapped that shot right after she had slipped
            And fallen in the Avon where she lived.
            I remember how we met; she caught me
            Swimming off her dock and asked me in for tea.
            The moment I walked into her cottage
            Her Madagascar Cockatiel started
            Thrashing and squawking inside its cage like
            A brilliant, green feather duster gone wild.

            Well, what would you have thought had you been there?
            It was merely frightened by a stranger!
            But in her house, she had all sorts of pets.
            The more unique, the more she was impressed:
            Blue Dutch Bunnies, only £12 apiece,
            Brazilian Ocelots, raccoon babies
            Shipped fresh from America, Guinea Pigs
            With fur so long they looked like nervous wigs.
            All that life reminded me of home back
            On the Chumash Rez down by Zaca Lake.

            So this is what compelled me to return
            To her place right after my rehearsals
            Upriver at the Swan (where I somehow
            Always got stuck playing Caliban). Now,
            I suppose I stayed too late one Winter
            Evening when we talked until the fire
            In her stove burnt itself out.  I felt it
            My chivalric duty not to leave and let
            The poor girl freeze.  So I took a flashlight
            And a saw and nearly sawed off my right
            Arm when Baby Heather, her big collie,
            Began to bark and whimper frantically
            And wrap its rusty chain around my legs.
            My ears still smart from when her ferret, Rags,

   Screamed when my lady iced the awful gash.
   And made me stay until the night had passed.
   Oh! How she took me captive in her bed,
   And cried out in my arms, then lay her head
   Across my bare chest and let my heartbeat’s
   Sound, slowing rhythm lull her off to sleep.
   But through the night, her Chinese goldfish went
   On wildly bashing its orange head against
   The insides of its bowl.  And that’s when I
   Began suspecting darker reasons why
   Her animals would sometimes disappear
   For two days, then magically re-appear

            Somehow a little different than before.
            But when I asked her, she would just ignore
            Me, as if my culture’s twenty thousand year
            Connection to our Mother Earth were mere
            Savage superstition.   Perhaps you feel
            That I was crazy; I thought so, until
            I found her photo album full of strange,
            Exotic, dark-skinned, dark-eyed men who ranged
            From Truk islanders to Aboriginees,
            And mounted squarely right along with these
            Was one crazy Injun who never slept
            Until I flew back home –but I digress.

            So it was then that it occurred to me:
            All her creatures' feeding bowls were empty!
            And… let’s just say I put this to an end;
            Her animals will never starve again.
            And now, as if alive, still here she sits,
            Another dismal lesson learned, now let’s
            Get going to the play; I want to meet
            This friend you say does well as Imogene.
            First, here’s Patrick Stuart as Prospero;
            He is the man who taught me all I know.