I.
Grandma knew she had the gene,
With her eyes she would fiddle,
Setting herself up for a future mildly unforeseen.
Her name was Cornelia The Second,
Overshadowed by her great grandmothers earlier fame,
Descendants of Queen Isabella, maybe,
From somewhere of some part of Spain.
But back to that formative day,
When Grandma realized Cornelia's destined craze,
It was when she was playing with her sister,
Some, who-can-last-the-longest-without-a-smile, game.
Silly it surely seemed,
Why withdraw from a moment of blissful gleam,
But Cornelia sat there catatonic for 10 minutes,
Whereas her sister just lasted for three.
Grandma stood there as a witness,
Settled into a life she's been ready to leave,
Interpreting her Grandaughter's ease with seriousness,
As reminiscent of a trait she could never relieve.
II.
One can never really fight one's nature;
A built-in set of characteristics since the womb,
Granted from one's past generations
And taken with one 'til their tomb.
'Tis a sublime truth,
Shelley spoke of once before,
But it doesn't hurt to be reminded
That to thineself be thineself, nothing less and nothing more.
III.
In the case of Ms. Cornelia Catatonia,
Whose tamed face as a kid was dismissed as sore,
She grew older to be easily saddened
By her heightened ocular acuteness, and the world she saw at it's core,
Which ultimately led to her dive in the river,
On a long listless summer-night of self-inquisition,
When her Spanish pride and her life long decry,
Decided to play the game of try-not-to-try
at the calm age of 75.
Mr. See
