The Last Meeting, along the Path to Arthur's Grave
         

Here — grass matted means
                                    a deer path, white tufts in underbrush
          mean a doe dozed last night, her ears like satellites,
swiveling. Like any prey. Like us,
                                    soon off to a hermitage, a convent.

Cowardly or clear-sighted, we'll hedge our bets
                                    in hairshirts, woolen robes, woolen
          underpants. We'll sail silent corridors, praying
for early November snow —
                                    remnants of stars wrung soft,

dawn's white lint. A prioress
                                    will show us how God lives
          in the lens: a neuron is webbed same as a nebula,
same as a snowflake. How the cuckold
                                    forgets the same as the cunt.

How we are never more alone
                                    than in love. We'll illuminate manuscripts
          with sketches of spiral galaxies — discs
of light, bulging, luminescent breasts.
                                    Darling, darling, who will forgive

that once we expected to suckle?
                                    Here — his headstone. Under stars beating
          dawn back. Among these vegetative beds, no,
beds of vegetation. Next to a doe's skull,
                                    her eye socket cracked.

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Copyright © 2014 Shelley Puhak All rights reserved
from Guinevere in Baltimore
The Waywiser Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission