An Avalanche Of Words (Revised) Poem by Margaret Alice Second

June easily explained my document, me being
an alien in a legal world, reading formulations
and provisos that had me falling down ice-cold
in fright; my brain left me in detention, buried
alive in an avalanche of terminology that kept
falling on my head

To my colleague this stuff is easily explained,
no guessing game - yet I cannot surface for air,
unfortunately I do not have her savoir faire and
cool mastery of benchmark idioms, my mind
cannot unbend and learn stratagems of legal
phrasing and make lists for future reference

Pain at back of my head informs my body it is
time to play dead, a limited vocabulary does
not allow me to decipher arcane language used
in Courts of Law, if only I could teach my brain
but it has been stubborn from the very start -
refusing to do my will