Dear M. Antoine de St. Exupéry

Dear M. Antoine de St. Exupéry

For a very long time I was a grown-up. This
you will understand, having been
such a person yourself. I spoke
with other grown-ups of politics and fashions,
of recipes and lesson plans. I wore stockings
and pointy-toed shoes, just like
the shoes that all the other
teachers wore in the brick school building
with no windows, where children did calculations
and classifications, wrote compositions and proofs
and could never be distracted by a rose,
a planet or a passing little prince.

Then one day, during a summer excursion
I found a forest path near a bay where a river
ripples into a great lake. Just at the place
where the sun streams through the branches
to touch the forest floor, a fox, haloed in red-gold,
stood beside the path. We gazed at each other
at length, while the sun blessed us both. I remembered
what it means to be tamed.

I left the windowless school and came
to live in the woods, where I wear soft shoes
and watch the seasons turn. The short days
of winter are here now. In their clarity
I sense the uniqueness of a rose
the presence of a small boy with
golden hair, and I know that like the fox,
I have been tamed.

Judy Roy