My Unravished Bride

Medusa’s head above the door

Has stoned the crows and salesmen, too;
But no one ever rocked me more
Than igneous, impassive you,
Though permanent now as headstones cut
With mottoes, there beside my walk,
So poets can imagine what
Art would sound like if it could talk.
Medusa once was fair herself
And drove the bright boys wild with lust.
Like you now, from her warden shelf,
She flakes in petrifying dust.

Evening Soap

She wasn't even pregnant when she bore

Her brother's child (step-only, thus genteel).
What she had concealed, though, never was made clear.
She named him Topsy, he the ickle heir
To Gallantyme, the biggest ranch around.
(They hired their own weatherman and sent
Over to Ft. Lupino for their boots.)
Paterfamilias, he pitched a fit
And sent her out into a thunderstorm,
Where Little Escobar saved her and hers
And made them warm in simple peasant ways.
It took three days to track them to his hut.
Never was quite the same, some people said,
What with his herky-jerky gait. Not once
Did she look at PF. He took to drink
And fisticuffs. And that was the premiere.

Garden Plot

PHYLLIS
Come, leave your tools, those blades and hoses.
There have been daisies, will be roses,
Whether you feed and clip and spray.
Sufficient flowers strew the day
In which we laugh, while overhead
The sun approves when clouds are bred;
Gather you hoses: now I stay.
Tomorrow I may be away.

CORYDON
You will be gone, like every she
Of every plant and every me.
Each flower fades; no flower cares,
Caught by the frost and unawares
That frost took Mom and Pop and Sis,
Took first that neighbor, then plucked this,
And will take you. As well you know.
If you must leave, well, all must go.
I shall come later. Come I will.
A garden grows where we keep still.

PHYLL.
You unappreciating drone.
If I be gone, and you alone,
I’ll find a mate who strokes and clucks.
Your hand is empty. When it plucks
A rose, the rose dissolves. The dew
Runs by your fingertips. Me too.

CORY.
Alone God made the gardener first,
His rising state, and not his worst.
I’ve been alone with these before,
Not less with you. Not any more.
If you push on, then I must turn
The water on. My roses burn.

PHYLL.
O little man, you spray too much.
Kid gauntlets on, you lose your touch.
Plants love like us; earth claims us all:
Rise with the spring, in autumn, fall.
You’ll make a fine mulch, fat and pure:
But love comes late, and death is sure.
Come straight inside: be quick, be bent.

CORY.
The roses speak: I hear the scent;
And I shall come before I go.

PHYLL.
How sweet the prick

CORY.
When roses blow.

A Tide in Their Affairs

I checked the tub for tides. The ducky rode
Bravely as ever, jake a duck as Drake.
Clearly the surface, clear of Spaniards, sent
A message to all pirates, blackguards: Make
Your bones in other bathrooms, the abode
Of breeds without the law. They pitch a tent
On bathmats, oilcloth, on a naked floor.
I scuppered them. Here you will find no more

Than Ivory, almost completely pure.
The tub was calm. And yet the drain was waiting
To suck and spiral all that came away.
Calm is a fury, still anticipating
The quack of terror. What poor ducks endure
To save the surface, even for a day.