After Aeneas

by Margaret Haas

 

 

So make love to me in a cave on a mountain

while Juno whispers lines of poetry

into your ear, my wandering hero,

 

so heave me into the sunlight

and leave me, while your godly words

harden to my shape like poured cement.

 

 

Cement? I lingered in poetry’s corners

to pluck words from the mouth of a god. 

But your laughter stilled like cooling wax,

 

pushed me from your shores even as Fate

loosed my anchors. What man could moor 

his heart in so cold a she-king’s harbor?

 

 

Leaving me was your fate; keeping you was mine.

Like two sides of a coin flipped into the air,

we could not both land with our faces in the sun.

 

You were my taste of immortality. The words

you kissed into me flowed through my chilled blood

as I writhed on the dirt floor of our marriage bed.

 

 

Who said marriage? Who said love?

None of my promises were meant to be kept, 

swept from the mouth of a cave, the mouth of a queen.

 

drawn with a single blue crayon. Poetry without promise,

eyes that taste like eyes—why long for more?

 

 

Why? No one, not even you, filled me up. 

A taste will never be enough. I want everything:
Love in all its forms, or Fire and all its parts.