It stood five miles from our town as the crow flies
Or as I would have flown on my Spacelander bike,
A four-square concrete box of a building for which the word
That springs to mind would have been nonetheless a misnomer
And set in so vast an expanse of that grass at which Kentucky
Thrives – the latter uncut since the building was built,
Though that is to suppose that built
Is the word and not something weirder like appeared or arrived -
That you could never quite see it until you got closer
Whereupon it would rise, without any windows, just the ladder
Up one side which was rusted real bad by the time I first climbed it,
Having plucked up the courage just to see what was there
Though in no way expecting to find what I found, the absence
Of a roof and way down on its floor, a girl on a towel,
Her head in a book. She said, I thought there’d be someone,
Come sooner or later. Are you just a head or do you get better?
She rolled herself over in her towel so it wrapped her, sat up
And patted the concrete beside her and so I threw my leg over
And climbed down the inside. She was, it’s true, considerably older
And I was a boy at an impressionable age. You live here? I asked.
She replied, I survive. This building I built it, in a manner of speaking.
It’s my home, she said and I believed her… What’s your name?
Thomasina, she replied. What you readin’, Thomasina? – Well, she said,
Aren’t we the boy brim full of questions… You’re little bit young but I’ll tellya.
