Comparisons.(Poem)

 
COMPARISONS 
 
   Six-year-olds at boarding school 
   will be a ready measure, 
   children of the western gentry 
   too far out to go--or 
   mother done a bunk. 
   Three times each year 
   they'd be bussed home 
   and then come back in tears. 
   At sixteen I had charge of three: 
   Wake them at eleven; 
   get them up to pee, 
   Point them at the toilet bowl 
   their height had just achieved. 
   How did one get used to it, 
   that dazedness in their faces? 
   Today you'd think it medication 
   but this was separation only, 
   whisked away from all they knew: 
   pony or a kelpie dog, 
   a mother too much sloshed to care, 
   a creek that spooled its way through trees, 
   some special rocks beyond the ...