Joan and Sappho

Sappho, the poetess, of Lesbos,
Before her suicide, wrote of love
And eros; her pen like cupid’s arrow
bled with the women who read

I think of Joan reading Sappho
Feeling spoken to, and heard
by this ancient woman of Lesbos
who was no different from her

Till her last breath, Joan loved Esther
in “The Bell Jar”, by Sylvia plath
A fiction where characters were trapped
not in paper, but rather, in glass

So when Sappho leapt from Leucidian cliffs
Did the waters show the face
Joan once saw in the bell jar
within which she was encased?