Girl of Fifteen

Girl of fifteen,

I see you each morning from my

As you pass on your way to school.

I do more than see,

I watch you.

I furtively draw the curtain aside.

And my heart leaps through my

And follows you down the street;

Leaving me behind,

And wholly ashamed.

What holds me back,

Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed,

But my forty years beyond your fifteen?

Girl of fifteen, as you

There passes, too, a lightning flash of

In which you lift those forty summers off my head,

And take those forty winters out of my heart.