A Poem in time for Back to School Shopping

Another picture of the shell tree that I've written about, for no reason other than that I like it. I haven't got any quilting done lately but I have been swapping poetry. Today I received the Tony Hoagland poem below which I had never read before:

At the Galleria Shopping Mall

Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear,
there are some 49 dollar Chinese made TVs;

one of them singing news about a far off war,
the other comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood

to the breast size of an actress from Bollywod.
And here is my niece Lucinda,

who is nine and a true daughter of Texas,
who has developed the flounce of a pedigreed blond

and declares that her favorite sport is shopping.
Today is the day she embarks upon her journey,

swinging a credit card like a scythe
through the meadows of golden merchandise,

Today is the day she stops looking at faces,
and starts assessing the labels of purses;

so let it begin. Let her be dipped in the dazzling bounty
and raised and wrung out again and again.

And let us watch.
As the gos in olden stories

turned mortals into laurel trees an crows
to teach them some kind of lesson.

so we were turned into Americans
to learn something about loneliness.

I think I should develop the motto: when you have nothing to say, quote a poem. This one says a lot of different things, as good poems do.