Hymn

I would have been a young man at your birth.
From the start we were seven hours apart.
Lovely-loving-love, I was of an age
to be your father. Considering my good luck,
I do not pity this aging body,
though I crave to know where and when I am going.

I am a happy man whose Black Irish beauty’s
chiseled body loved me near half a century.
She has made love truly a work of art
give or take more than one failure,
an overload of desire, and no excuses . . .
How could I excuse what I failed to do?

If it were not for your golden pussy,
Beautiful-all-over-with-your-rich-name-
your-fiery-hair-wet-lips-your-burnished-nails,
I’d settle for being a full-grown man
whose forever young gypsy wife opens
her legs and her black-haired thighs to his cock in rut . . .

That may be how love is made all century long
everywhere. In America no one is wilder
than you roaming your chameleon shores.
If I were home when you knocked on my door,
and the war was over, I would answer:
At first love slowly, then furiously.
　
–St. Anonymous,
in the month of May, year of our Lord 2012

(copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander)