She lived too far from Golden Gate,
	had lived too few years to be
a hippie. She was less
	about free love than any love

she could borrow, if only for one
	unsupervised night in that Summer
of Love, when even a grown woman,
	unmarried, could not easily protect

herself from the unintended consequence
	of cavorting in the rec room. 
Remember that she lived
	in a world where even a woman

with a husband could not stand
	before a classroom with a round belly.
Hear her father yell about the shame
	she’d bring upon the family,

command her to hide in her bedroom
	when relations knock at the door.
See her mother, bent
	on obeying her marriage vow,

lead the child to her end.
	Sit with the girl across the steel
desk from a caseworker demanding
	damages for her hospital delivery

if she doesn’t sign her name
	on the paper that says she is not
the mother of the child she grew inside
	her body. She had lived too few years

to be responsible for another life,
	considering she had fallen easily
into the arms of indecency, ruined
	her chance at landing

an upstanding young man
	for a husband. She resisted
as long as she could hold
	out. In the end, they took

her first born love, wrapped him
	as a present for the faithful,
obedient childless to raise
	without a thought of her

constrained in a classroom, learning
	to leave the child behind.
She had lived too few years
	to do anything different.

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