My Last Hour (Upon Paros)

Shakespeare would have introduced me
earlier, roaring forward into a high halo
of reflected light, bursting into
constellations upon the tomb of that Capulet
wall.

My heart is not ready
to be unhorsed; my horse is not ready
to be lead from unwashed dancing. What god
can offer a dispensation?

From a cold throne of seven marble steps,
I regard blades of hair and slopes
of shoulders, schooling forward in stripes
and prurient florals.
They are closer to the stem;
it is not this late for them.
The proud pennon of my smile flies before
the teeth of my defenses, but there is nothing more
and no one left to vanquish.
Archers and cupids relax their
wrists; and the statue of my head begins
to assume the face of a cloud.
I admit exhalations of every lung, leaf and
thing.

I breathe, I am, and I am
the sum. How I have occupied myself

with disappointments and intrigues,
amassing a coat
of many things and thorns.

I remove my shoes.
The vast ultramarine (for air is a sea
where we, the anxious, feed at the bottom)
claims the blue veins

of my feet. Ants crawl darkly in farewell.

They were first to play with me, too.
I remember.
I destroyed many with my heel and toe, grinding
them into pepper.

Why would a child do that? What did I know?
What did I remember?



My Last Hour (Upon Paros) [#45]
© 2009 Fammerée


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Richard Fammerée
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org

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Photograph by Susan Aurinko

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