She sits in a cream-colored latte shop trimmed with green
(The kind I hate profoundly but makes a good cup of joe.)
Paperback in hand, her eyes
Glide across the page like a skater on ice.
Not digging deeper and not being touched.
It’s a best seller; has to be! The die is cast the mold is set
In this trendy house of idle skimming chatter
Her smart blue suit and black-rimmed spectacles cannot lie.
The evening is warm, just a notch above balmy. And there she sits
Looking at words she’ll never love
Her mind in a dozen fractured bits, colliding receding rolling about
It’s the ideal life, I suppose
A chariot built by the sons of Charlemagne
Robes by the daughters of Caesar
A good book, a cappuccino with all the trimmings,
A rose-hued sky taut above fat, marshmallow clouds that hang
Like strewn rocks suspended in a frozen moment
And there she sits, sipping occasionally
Athena caged! A tornado ensnared!
As far from distraught as content
Listlessness hovering over her face
Unable to hide
Oh Hera, was a silent tongue thy undoing,
Some filial acquiescence to an overbearing father’s vicarious demands,
The guilt imparted by a weary mother who’d had her fill of impulse and whim?
When, I wonder,
Did your muse put the lyre to rest?
An oblivious sip and shift in her chair,
An upward glance,
And Isis vanishes behind a broad smile
(All except a glimmer maybe only I can see)
Venus rises
To embrace a far cry from Lancelot
Broad shoulders and a fancy suit with a fresh haircut
A nose-job and a couple of love-handles shy of a nauseating commercial
And Mórrígan, my dear, sweet Mórrígan is gone
The veneer had jelled and hardened
And my mirror
(funny as it was)
fades away