photo looking across a lake with a smooth surface, reflecting pale blue sky with wispy clouds, and trees on the other shore, with springtime foliage including a few purple-pink redbuds in bloom on a small hill; in the foreground are some scraggly plants growing from the ground, and still-bare twiggy branches coming down from above.

my grief remains for the flowers, the herbs,
the growth habits i learned to recognize,
the pungent smells of bruised leaves, and
a lake with which i had grown familiar. only
with hesitation do i crush a sprig of rosemary.

the plants and seasons here are different.
i try not to use Latinate species names, or
the determinacy of words to describe life, as
a guest. sometimes it seems inevitable, and
i contribute to the loss already underway.

nothing is more miraculous than a human
body. becoming container for the self-strange,
unbecoming as that may be, mine followed me
here, reiterating its lesson without the black-
clad metaphor: no entry gained by force, beyond

barest survival. and the last time you
came begging here; when her hand was offered
to mine in marriage, now as i was candlelit royalty
in a fortress built of aging apples; the last time i
invited forth the rampaging fourth wall, to cross

the threshold of my door, to hold the iffy
soliloquy of me; would be the last time for
it all. no other help to meet the human
who doesn’t make and keep a home to serve
the stranger, the migrant, the nameless refugee.


//

Phaedrus: (as Lysias, cont.)

primarily not
to present-being (pareimi)
pleasure (hedone)
(for you)

will i together-be (suneimi)
(with you)
attending (therapeuein)

but to lingering-doing (mellein)
help (opheleia)
to-be (esesthai)
by you

// 233β

πρῶτον μὲν οὐ τὴν παροῦσαν ἡδονὴν

θεραπεύων συνέσομαί

σοι

ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν μέλλουσαν ὠφελίαν ἔσεσθαι

//

photo from April 2019