A Japanese parasol halos two young ladies
attired in ruffles, one pours tea from a small porcelain
teapot into two small azure ceramic teacups, the other
wears an expression of disengagement, discontent, vaguely
distressed, perhaps resignation to a future of irrelevancy.

Is she the poet thinking of a time when she will be old
knowing, “my poems were not major enough
to even make me a “minor poet.” But the future is
unknowable and time has a way of changing everything.
It is the unreliable narrator, it cannot be kept track of.

It can change even desire and disappointment
into the acceptance of the monotony of irrelevancy.