Classic Poem

Why do I play so much at solitaire?
I think of the Queen of Clubs as reclining on the chest of the bored King of Diamonds,
who is flirting across cards with the Queen of Spades——
the King of Spades watching them from a corner.
I think of the villainous Jack of Spades
as lolling on the Queen of Diamonds,
and eyeing all the while the lonely Queen of Hearts, who has no Jack.
I think of the effeminate Jack of Hearts
as waving his yellow symbol at the manly Jack of Clubs.
And I think——

I think of myriad hands at play.
There are the chubby, the lean, the rounded, the scrawny, the furrowed, the fragile, the coarse, the ugly, the symmetrical.
There are the rosy, the pallid, the manicured, the unkempt.
There are the nervous, the deliberate, the hesitant, the playful, the intent, the cautious, the subtle, the careless——
fingers tapering, fingers blunt, fingers lopped, fingers clenched, fingers motionless——
the hands all doing the very things that mine so often do.
And there are the hands of today and the hands of a past day.
I often think that I should like to take some one of them in mine.

But I think of little else——
and that is why I play.