Analysis of Paved Paradise

As I, at twenty, watched my body for warning signs
of a new existence, I thought of Joni — who,
at twenty-one, lay in a Canadian hospital
where crooked caretakers bound
the breasts of unwed mothers
to suppress their milk supply. With   
shaking hands, she let go of Little Green,
and signed a paper promising her a childhood
of private schools and country clubs – inconceivable
to someone simply surviving. Soon
came the success; the cash, the chemical
happiness, the crowds clamoring
to get close to her – but still,

sometimes, sitting in stage wings,
she imagined she could hear
the breaking and the breathing of
a memory game card daughter, somberly
searching for her match
as the radio carried a voice from
a famous California canyon  – a maternity ward
for a generation’s greatest hits. I wonder

how the landscape would have looked
had she chosen instead to be a
prisoner of the white lines on the
road to ballet practice; when
she told the coyote she had no regrets,
did she remember the motion sickness
of feeling the world turn
on a silent birthday? Never mind;

after her, there were millions of women,
each with an empty space to fill in, where
the music napped peacefully, during
their confusion years – before
they bore their own girls,
whose futures and freedoms now lie

in the hands of men
old enough to remember when
she sang about looking at life

from both sides now.