To Katie

To Katie: A Poem in Commemoration of Your Completion of Les Miserables.


You completed Les Mis in record time.
Pages turning, turning, turning.
You must have asked yourself, like many an ignorant student in the past,
Will Jean Valjean EVER die?
(Yes, of course he will, but not until he has surpassed the days of Melchizidek).

But no, callous fool, Jean Valjean lives on.
He is in the traces of every convict ever written,
He is in every oppressed person -
In every oppressed person, crushed by the weight of reality
and left reeling in the darkness of utter despair.

Yes, Jean Valjean is the theme of this song -
He inspires awe and wonder, and (dare I say it) incredulity.
How did you do it, Jean?
You maintained upper body strength into your 100's,
You fled from Javier with the nimble tip-toeings of a young beetle,
and with the speed of a cunning she-fox.
You changed your identity multiple times,
You saved lives,
And when I saw you in London you sang opera-style
without skipping a beat.

Oh, Jean, immortal and inextinguishable
(until you eventually died),
How does my banal existence compare
with your heights of joy and pits of depression?
I have saved no prostitutes, I have been no mayor,
I have never stolen silver, and I have never been saved by a clever old bishop with a heart of gold.

And so I resign myself to the monotonous
routine of my shabbily executed life.
But take heart, oh weary soul!
Somewhere, out there, there is an adventure of sorts,
just waiting for my unparalleled, fame-deserving, latent skills.