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Isabella Bird
(born in Boroughbridge, 1831 – 1904)
That poor girl named Bird, tiny and sickly bird,
flew through insomnia, back pain, headache,
until, at the family doctor’s urging
flung herself out like a hard little stone,
from her home-sling over the world’s healing latitudes.
She started her long journeys from Hawaii,
climbing and descending,
Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa.
From infancy the road healed her, as did
the horror of a child’s abandoned dress.
From infancy she chose trousers,
observing the unseen, how slanted eyes
fall from eastern faces in laughter.
Like ersatz fish splashing in water,
the whole Rocky Mountain range crumbled on her;
its red rocks
fell from an irresistible desperado’s heart,
the one-eyed Jim Nugent, poet and bully --
but never a husband.
Embracing him, she wrote her bestseller:
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
–
then left.