Monastery

In his usual state of sexual arousal
the septuagenarian alone remembers
the women who loved with him, one by one,
before Cathleen said yes a second time.

The day yawns and the sun rises.
The quiet’s what he’s not used to.
Twenty-some years here and he cannot run
in the forest naked along his private path.

The legs walk against water and that way
he hopes to heal. The woman who helps him
could be his daughter. He loathes what age does
to a randy old man who trades masturbation

for sublimation. Juices withheld from the air
form little clouds of images and thoughts
he remembers from Mandrake the Magician.
Reading comics in his youth prepared him

for what? Making the only movie he tried,
recalling the colors, black and white included,
what he later learned words could make him see
more clearly, so much so he is a monk

in his own castle on a Greek island,
who rises at dawn, yes, in gratitude
to the maker for one more day to love
as he would love a woman who’s still here.

(25 July 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander