What the Phoenix Sings to the Ashes
        Pompeii, Italy

Let me tell you
how the world remains:

the tortoise balances
two tomes on his spine—

the book of Seneca
and the book of pins.

If you thumbtack your triptych
to Vesuvius, you can not flee.

Even Pliny explains
the lover's three hesitations:

stay, stay here and you will stay
lineaments cased in gray desire.

Now it is raining.
Now a woman is talking to me—

she will keep her envelope
flecked with ash.

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Copyright © 2013 Lois Marie Harrod All rights reserved
from Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis
Cherry Grove Collections
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission