Orpheus
       

All the night's fleeting drama once we wake
crumhles into a vortex we can't remake

as if we were created never to look back.
To resurrect Eurydice, such

hard work, poetry readings to the dead,
harp recitals in vacant catacombs,

hexameters for shades, Sapphic stanzas
rehearsed to shadows, and soothing tones

for junkyard dogs. Eventually he reached
the undiscovered country

on no map, that sends magnetic fields
to pull us back and forth like geese.

He found the stone couple in their inverted
penthouse, charmed them enough to return

his bride, though it was plain to see,
even through all the murk,

they would never surface alive. No one can
not glance back. They knew no living mortal

could bring so much quickness out their portal.
He tried, got to see her outstretched arms

evaporate, what we see when morning light
obliterates the stars. It happens every day .

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Copyright © 2018 Stuart Bartow All rights reserved
from Green Midnight
Dos Madres Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission