With apologies to Anacreon

Long-legged coltish girl, why now these darkened sidelong looks
and why this stiffened neck, this hard-set chin?
Do you suppose that I know nothing of defiance and its ways?
How it shows itself in nostrils flared
and how it spurs you on to lift your face all fiery-eyed,
and pause, then dart and shake your head to whiplash back your hair?

Listen, listen to a man who’s been around
the block a time or two and back again.

Your pitched disdain for men will be the fast undoing of your days.
Some sly and lovely boy will slip a bridle on you suddenly
when you are tired from keeping up your guard
from dawn to past midnight,
when you, for just a moment or a second’s edge, then let it slip away --
he'll have you saddled up before you have the time to blink.

You think that just because you’ve grazed
your meadows riderless and skipped so freely until now
no one will ever rein you in and lead you, broken, round the course?

Oh you will know remorse for this, or joy, some day
when, smiling, this bold wrangler, skilled in knowledge of the sweet spot
on your neck, your thighs,
whose gallop in the world is wider and out-paces yours by miles,
gets past your stubbornness, your girlish smarts, your wiles,
and harnesses, entwines, your will, to ride you to your heart’s demise.