There Is a Girl Inside

there is a girl inside.

she is randy as a wolf.

she will not walk away

and leave these bones

to an old woman.

she is a green tree

in a forest of kindling.

she is a green girl

in a used poet.

she has waited

patient as a nun

for the second coming,

when she can break through gray hairs

into blossom

and her lovers will harvest

honey and thyme

and the woods will be wild

with the damn wonder of it.

-Lucille Clifton, 1980