Still Strangers

After years

      of wear, she would sew,

with those sharp dead

                          beads, new thoughts

into the threadbare pattern of memory

and he solder

      his, older, thoughts into place. . . .

                                                                  …Long ago…

they learned to slaughter

        their eager laughter and tear

                       their deepest tears out of each’s other,

                           to utilize their exquisite words

           like hamhamhammers and broadswords –

then, their mutual wounds

                   they wound all about their lives like poison ivy.

(Each just one more bothersome

              clone to the other. . . .)

But.

There had been a time

          ,once,

                        before the tiny

                                    mutiny,

when they were still strangers

                                                       to anger;

when they could lie sun-baked

                                     naked upon the jurassic sands

or beside the slow hearth

                         unearthing new treasures from their together,

when,

             in some safe

                          café, their yes

               -eyes could swallow entire

          their sweet menus

                        of Venus

and for many an hour

                          pour their love

from lip to mouth like milk from a pitcher to a glass.

                                                                             But that time passed.... 


--Duane Vorhees