Mild-eyed Euryphaessa has birthed
nigh on seventy-four full-formed far-winged daughters
since last we basked in the glow of the perfect pitch
of her favored kin and her consort that night, star-fathering Astraios.
But we have always foregone the horological
invocations of our old dead predecessors.
We wrote our masterworks in fiery touch
when we were still the kids we claim to keep alive;
we seared with fingers a thousand odes across our ribs,
as many sonnets in the smalls of our backs,
and 'canted glorious hymns down each others' throats.
As we sang to each other then, modulating our natural harmonies,
you bit my lip, not for the first time.
Do you remember? I bled, just a bit. You called it purification.
You told me it was my self-punishment for an imagined sin,
then apologized for any suffering I caused myself. You cried
for just an instant, the pale cold oceanic salt blur hitting your own lips
in one of those too-perfect movie moments you loved to hate to love.
You shared that moment with me, the mutual sting of sodium and iron
jumpstarting our youthful frames, and we toppled back to our bed of Mayan
blanket, crumpled clothes, and discarded skin cells.
The night's cycle began anew, birthing the stuff
from which details are later selected, rejected,
detested, rejoiced, and, ultimately, retold.
Slowly, though, we burned through our hours,
and dawn crested her first fierce glare over the horizon-line.
You swore against her, at first under your breath, then screaming exposed her
for the thieving whore she proved to be. You promised (though to whom,
I now would ask) that this night would not be our last.
Your tears this time were not momentary, but a pathos-flood
of embittered rage and choked grief the force of which
brought me to likened lows. With deepest hesitation we parted,
and with sorrow deeper yet we have passed these years apart;
the creep and lurch of time inevitably brought
the quelling of our flames, the rasping of our throats,
the far-flinging end of our prodigious union.
I'm told it was Osiris and his gods of the Nile
who blew us seven-hundred-some miles apart, but
we always screamed youth's empassioned defiance
to whoever was listening once we fell, panting, sweat-slicked,
apart. Do you remember? We rejected the printed page
as the passive empty delusion of an age
that has lost its connection with the fundamental Chaos
by which our lives have always been tethered.
And here I am, writing of you. Writing not in the
ears or flesh of those who came after, not in
the long languorous spirals of skin-against-skin,
but in short rapid keystrokes devoid of meaning
and frozen in intent, frozen in the permanence
that we denied as devolutions of our human spirits.
Here I am, writing of you, not speaking with you,
not revelling in your passion; you were always the better me.
Even then, six years ago to the day, under that nigh-empty sky,
you were all I strove to be. Tonight, the moon is full.
You know, that night, the moon was just past new,
but we couldn't hardly care. We were more like children then,
together, and we had full moons of our own. We danced in
the moonless black, and even Astraios took his gracious leave;
our revelry was our own that night, six years ago to the day.
Our roadside field has been razed repeatedly since then-
controlled burns, wildfires, arson. I know what you'd say.
Erase the past. Destroy it utterly. Forget there
ever was a past. Recall only what is to come, and then forget that.
Confabulate if anything must be said- keep the symbols and
the signs, but honor the meager truth with improvements
by the infinite fancies of time, honor those long-ago songs
with new refrains bettered by the palliative of age.
But shades of reverie have often across the six-year expanse
grimly visited with infectious ire the still-opened gash,
though now in repose I find again the troubling pull of reflection,
from which, this time, comes not that wallowing in grief which
you predicted with your angry shouts to the rising sun
(and which has come in every retrospective reverie yet),
but the returning vestiges of ecstatic wonder that do not dampen
current spirits, but inspire to greater heights the efforts of future exploits.
(copyright a(scetic)verse March 09 2010)
