A Poem for a Thursday #211

Dorothy Parker was an American, poet, critic, and satirist. She lived from 1893-1967. Parker sold her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914 and shortly after accepted an editorial job at Vogue where she took over from P. G. Wodehouse as drama critic. When the New Yorker debuted in 1925 she was on the editorial board and she contributed regularly to the magazine. Parker was also a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, an informal group of writers known for its “scathing wit and intellectual commentary.”

We'll go out to the open spaces,
               Break the web of the morning mist,
Feel the wind on our upflung faces.
                {This, of course, is if you insist.}
We'll go out in the golden season,
                 Brave-eyed, gaze at the sun o'erhead.
{Can't you listen, my love, to reason?
                  Don't you know that my nose gets red?}
Where the water falls, always louder,
                  Deep we'll dive, in the chuckling foam.
{I'll go big without rouge and powder!
                   Why on earth don't you leave me home?}

We'll go out where the winds are playing,
               Roam the ways of the brilliant West.
{I was never designed for straying;
               In a taxi I'm at my best.}
Minds blown clean of the thoughts that rankle,
               Far we'll stray where the grasses swirl.
{I'll be certain to turn my ankle;
                Can't you dig up another girl?}
We'll go out where the light comes falling—    
              Bars of amber and rose and green.
{Go, my love, if the west is calling!
              Leave me home with a magazine!}

Song of the Wilderness
Dorothy Parker