Kathleen –A Portrait
              By Tom Robbins

                   Ah, Kathleen, inventor of the Irish H –bomb,
                   
                   Cross between a buttercup and a raging bull.
                   
                   In some more exalted meadow now, lip-glossed
                                              
               And pissing off the angels,
                                     
                    Then cooking them such heavenly dinners,
                   
                      Of lamb and duck and oyster mushrooms,
                   
                  That they wished they’d taken her home sooner.
                         
                      
                      Her golden body, that loved to dance,
                   
                            Cheek-to-cheek with danger.
                   
                       Her lavender mind, that decorated
                   
                    With romance and wild scheme-a-rama
                                         
                        Everything and everyone it touched,
                  
                 Both swallowed by the great gray mystery now,
                   
                         As fog sometimes swallows the rain.

                        
                              But her spirit remains here,
                   
                              Parked – illegally, of course –
                  
                           In the driveway of our memory,
                   
                           Still racing it’s mercurial engine,
                   
                              Like a 400-horsepower car
                  
                         That she’s lost the license to drive.

                                                          ***