Story

So much happened nothing became sacred.
If the sky had walls they were all blown down.
Your dead friend’s ghost, pretty one, is ashore.
We are all alone, each a seafarer
sailing the whale road, praying to no one.
I am abed with my wench. I love her
more than the word love ever meant, yet.
Her soft belly is full of her children,
my head running with names like a river.
There is no place to go we have not gone.

Juan liked to sit on a banquette, with pen
scribbling and drawing pictures on napkins
of what was in his mind, from now to then,
followed by the walk around the circuit,
he called it, ending at the levees down
though they looked to be standing, as secure
as a baby at its mother’s nipple.
Did a levee stand for a woman’s breast,
was she alive in the lake like a tale
about something or other fanciful . . .

Never having borne a child was Adore’s
secret. That’s why her skin was unsullied
at eighty, why she bore this young man’s lust
and churned its juices into love he poured
as she gathered the cream where it was pooled
and loved the smell of him as he loved hers.
Juan loved Adore. Why is this a story?
Is it hers, or his? What is a story
when only one writes what the other lives?
There’s nothing sacred now the gods are dead.

(15 March 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander