The Road to Senanque, and: On the Appian Way, and: Semele, and: Ariadne in Verona

The Road to Sénanque

On the Sunday afternoon we entered
the canyon road to Sénanque, we were
feeding ourselves on daydreams, we were
wondering if this was our last trip to France
even as we craved the stern, hard-breathing beauty
of one more Cistercian abbey. If we were clothing
the memories of our youthful bodies
in bikinis and thongs instead of monastic gowns
it was because of the hot dry wind in Provence
or because of the scent of each other's groins on our fingertips
or because of the way our cremated ashes would sizzle
the day they hit the water. Lovely are
the thighs and shoulders of the monks still living
in seclusion at Sénanque, knotting the corners of their robes
before they walk in the wind and imagine themselves
wearing garments of owl feathers and pine.
To love beyond all measure: would we finally learn
what that means if we meditated on stone benches
and slept on straw beds on the floor, if we prayed,
planted lavender and cultivated honey, if we lost all courage
but stayed on the high narrow road to Sénanque?
Beautiful are your shoulders and your voice at the moment
when it first breaks the morning silence as we enter another day
to imagine ourselves traveling a blue, intimate void
chanting words that leave echoes like protective charms
and watch while the snow fills our door until
we feel ourselves become both mountain pass and sky.

On the Appian Way

When I reached the Tomb of Cecilia Metella
along the road lined with cypresses
and the timbre of the custodian's greeting
was the sting of your radiance in my veins,

when I looked beyond the walls into open fields
and deciphered in the cryptic markings
of parasol pines a code for passion
signified outside the forms of flesh,

when I stood with other travelers
under ruined stone arches to hear the custodian
praise the love of Metellus for Cecilia –
"dispossessed, she was his only possession," –

the burnt eloquence of words –
so much a part of you – returned
and line by line I began to read
that book of smoke your illness.

Semele

Dusk leaning into night
the moon's weedy nest glows
in a tree of stars
in the darkness of his lair
she sleeps and dreams
he comes to her as fire
the sequined air whirls
hot kisses test her lips
there is the shock of sparks
flung like arms around her waist
a wild sweet terrifying
taste of flame in her mouth
now her soul ignites
weightless and finally free
the bold fingers of light
rush to please her
smoke rises through floodlit
branches of sky and now
she feels herself both
sun and moon the fire
has opened her forever
her body blooms
white and intelligible
among glittering leaves.

Ariadne in Verona

To wander the ruined amphitheater
with a taste of tar in her mouth.
To sleep in a vacant square
as her marble bed grows softer.

To wake in a babble of hailstones
with unrelenting comraderie – with weariness.
To share at noon the anxious watch
of statues in a deserted garden.

To lift her arms because grief is spacious –
a plunge through the satins of Naxos!
To mark and slit the rustling bolts
into falling down days.

To sit alone and smoke until she finds
a pattern in the maze of myrtle
through which his restless body
drifts like a sleepwalker.