by Steve King
© 2003
All rights reserved
For years after,
she served pomegranates and wine
in the keep of her new/old lord.
The wine would soften their laughs for a time,
until the war stories
and then the war games,
and the names of the dead,
and their dead memories;
'til death took hold of their wine-filled mornings,
took hold of their morning wine-dreams.
She never saw the sea again from a boat,
though in her dreams she watched the waves,
heard them o'ertopping
along the reach of some far safe harbor,
felt once more the unrelenting pull
of sea on yielding shore.
Not for adventure.
Not now.
Not again for love, nor vanity.
Not now.
There wasn't time enough, she thought,
to nurture a new race of memories.
Nights, she heard the winds sing
through olive trees,
remembering the other-world scents,
wondering how it all had come to pass,
wondered at its passing.
Yet she remained, and must remain:
Her beauty was part of their wine-dreams, too,
though they hardly talked of her now.
