paradise Lost.

-hello sir and pardon me

but i seem to have gotten lost

on my way

my way to paradise-

she had big brown eyes

the kind you see in children books

looking from the face 

of the secret princess 

the one that temporarily 

works in a shop

but is not a shopgirl

and was holding a map

as tall as she was

with sketches from michelangelo

scraps of eliot and cummings

and a diagram of the human heart

in blue and red

scattered across its tattered surface

beside notes that said things like

"don't forget the milk"

and "out late be home by morning".

she had a pen stuck determinedly 

behind her ear like a small pennant

the battle colours that would not be allowed

to fall to fail

and long brown hair

twisted and tied in braids and ribbons

looking like a stream

that was frozen over in a quick winter

life caught still 

for a moment

like this moment 

where she stood on the sidewalk

with her small feet

in brown shoes that you never see sold

but always on the feet 

of the not quite poor

as if they grew there 

or were left by some politician

with a sense of 'what is right' in storybooks

and calls it character

she stood there on the nondescript day

that the weatherman had described as 'partial'

and mumbled off into insecurity

in her brown shoes with her brown eyes

and her map

the map to paradise

while the man broke stride a second

and tossed a copper coin

towards her toes 

like an appeasement to Fortune

that She would continue to bless him

and keep him from 

brown shoes

and girls who have dreams