Namesake

Let us imagine her lover. Or better yet, yourself . . .
You were young once like her, you had no need
to walk away without loving
or being loved. Specify loved body
not mind . . . The images come later,
after your body fountains into hers.

Where she lives is not named for Lord Byron.
Nor the women whose love he could not cure
himself of. Nor the passions of friendship . . .
Mary in his castle on Lake Geneva
caught up by her monster Adam
beginning and ending where I live now, icily.

When it’s not raining she takes off her clothes
to enjoy her body as immensely
as a woman can. It doesn’t need to rain . . .
If only you would drive the thousand miles,
let me be everywoman to your man,
endure my tongue, slake love between my legs,

I would be a happy woman till death
took you or me from the beach to its breast,
I your succor, you mine, ah the bright leaves
I will never forget, the tree you are . . .
but some images never arrive.
She is shelter or storm, never both.

I put on my manhood. It strains to be.
If it had asked I would reply, Stay home . . .
In the scene in Priest of Love, where his cock
is cast as a shadow on the bedroom wall,
Frieda is waiting to love and be loved.
He is the shade kneeling between her legs.

Lawrence did not live long. Nor did Byron;
Shelley’s life the briefest of all
these wild ones. Their women stay behind
to keep alive whatever they may leave–
fortune yet to come, or disappointment . . .
The only loving is made here, on earth.

(20 March 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander