The Glass Menagerie

I was going to put up some lines i found in a diary which are very unlike India to have written. But then i came upon this:
" My favourite poem... beautifully desperate and so easy to relate to."
Here's what she's talking about - a poem by Alicia Ostriker, untitled:

Passing that fiery tree—if only she could
Be making love,
Be making poetry,
Be exploding, be speeding through the universe
Like a photon, like a shower
Of yellow blazes—

She believes if she could only overtake
The riding rhythm of things,
Of her own electrons,
Then she would be at rest…
If she could forget school,
Climb the tree,
Be the tree,
Burn like that.

…She doesn’t know yet, how could she
That this same need
Is going to erupt every September
And that in 40 years the idea will strike her
From no apparent source,
In a Laundromat
Between a washer and a dryer,
Like one of those electric light bulbs
Lighting up near a character’s head in a comic strip—
There in that naked and soiled place
With its detergent machines,
Its speckled fluorescent lights,
Its lint piles broomed into corners as she fumbles for quarters
And dimes, she will start to chuckle and double over
Into the plastic baskets’
Mountain of wet
Bedsheets and bulky overalls—
Old lady! She’ll grin,
beguiled at herself,
Old lady! The desire to burn is already a burning! How about that!

ps: i owe Gnarls for this putting me on my way to discovering this one.