Liquid

“The light in the cavern is daylight, not fire.” ~ Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

Your loved one’s body, now destroyed by fire

And lightning, cannot open as a ghost

Might, prize the heart to fissure from desire,

Release from burned up corpse that used to boast

Compelling flesh and personal, wet smell.

The hair around that organ will not shape

Your passion, not again, though gates of hell

Should fly apart to let that fragrance gape

To fill your nostrils with peculiar musk

That wafted up as lips approached their goal

For lust does not uprear itself from rusk

Turned ashes, from the cinders of its role.

  Go scatter them upon the river.  Scold

    Its flow with memories driest now and cold.

©  Phillip Whidden