What the Women Did When They Loved as Girls, the Boys during the Void of Love's Absence

Love never wanes. The boys gone, the girls relax into their bodies
as though there were no end to the dream of a life to come . . .
Love never wanes. The girls enjoy the simplicities of life, the soul
of their own wit relaxing into a warmth only women know . . .
Love never wanes. The boys cannot find their compass without
the north of their bodies to gibe with the south of the soul . . .

I don’t know what you know, man, but the wilderness is a city.
Cut away the growth of vines and roots and there is the treasure
you can reach only with the help of up-and-coming archeologists,
the degree’d and amazed, their eyes holding out for the secret
answers to all the questions they brought from school to the lip
of the jungle called City. I gotta say, man, you know everything.

The girls need to file away the remembered passages and live out
the future, that lovely dream that never ends, it may be life itself.
The boys are hard at work in their downtown Mexico City hotels.
A week without music is better than a life with the wrong song.
And so it is for her: the angel of liberty arches on the Reforma,
crossing Insurgentes, immortal struggle always to love the angel.

(20, 29 April 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander