Eurydice's Story

Now I live in the darkness
I see it was his story not mine.

All that fanfare about the lyre
charming the gloomy king:
the songs of the stricken young husband
with the newly-wraithed wife
whom he wished to return to the light.

Even the Furies were seduced,
believing he was playing for me
to come up, up the white, marbled path
to the shining cumulus,
and the mare's tails swishing across the blue.

Instead, he was measuring the notes,
calculating each syncopation
to turn Cerebrus lapdog,
to charm Charon into a return journey,
to seduce all the denizens of the deathly labyrinth--
Tantalus ceased his grasping
Sisyphus turned from his wounds

That achieved, he had no more need
to keep honour with the gods or me.
His gaze pierced our love's luminescence,
Looking back, he returned me to the dark
to dice with pomegranate seeds forever

His yearning arms fooled them---not me;
I knew there were many Echoes
slipping behind lichened rocks
in the yellowwoods above,
many nymphs in the streams
who would sing to the lyre
he had seemed to play for me

A Wake-up Call

He phoned earlyish, soft-voiced, complicit
"This is Jerome. Did I wake you up?
"Do you remember me?"

There have been men in my life,
but no jeromes
and I had been up since five-thirty,
with the puppy
with words and worlds
with kitchens and packed lunches

"I think you have the wrong number
"This is ........." and I gave mine.
"Is that the number in the paper?"
"Yes, we are selling a car" I said,
uncertain that was what he wanted.

He was stricken,
"Is this not .......?" giving a number similar to ours.
"No" I confirmed.
"Sorry to have woken you" he insisted.

The intimacy was imposed, thus, again,
in spite of the wrong number
Perhaps for the jeromes of the marketplace
a female voice always promises possibility
and maybe this time I would begin
the long, slow description
of my silk-sheeted bed
with its prone sleepy beauty
waiting his call

Next day I checked the smalls
and there it was, the number he had meant to dial:
Crystal: "Blonde, busty babe. Private. I will meet your every desire.
    Discipline."