In my basement
I come across a thick file
“Maggie Rose Murphy” is on the folder
It bulges
Poems & postcards & letters galore
From throughout the 1980s
Your scientific acumen
Has long been respected
(And to eavesdrop on you
Talking shop with a colleague
I’d walk away as if
I’d been hearing the Khmer tongue)
And it’s none of my business
But I fantasize
Typing up
Arranging and sequencing
Pestering publishers
Till seeing this heft
Of youthful fire
Enformed in pages
“Now available
In hardback”
