Jean Valentine was born in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois, and has lived most of her life in New York City. Her many collections of poetry include Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems ... More >
I am twenty,
drifting in la chalupa,
the blue boat painted with roses,
white lilies—
No, not drifting, I am poling
my way into life. It seems
like another life:
There were the walls of the mind.
There were the cliffs of the mind,
There were the seven deaths,
and the seven-bread offerings—
Still, there was still
the little boat, the chalupa
you built once, slowly, in the yard, after school—