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Orpheus Revisited
He crushes his cigarette into the marble
ashtray. The sun starbursts along the maple
neck of his guitar as he uncoils the last string,
the metallic serpent whose venom sings
her heart and kisses the back of her knees.
Finally, she is coming home,
has been gone for quite some
time. “An eternity,” he thinks
as he tosses back his drink
and worries over the highway traffic.
Like a snake assails its prey, his deft fingers
swiftly fit the final string, and he is pleased to find
the years gone by have not slowed the masterful
hands that scale the frets of her every wonderful
orgasm. “Sade, The Gypsy Kings, or Billy Joel?”
he ponders over what to serenade her with.
He strikes a chord and it rings true while
in the plane descending towards Baltimore
her ears pop as her bag of peanuts falls to the floor.
Grinning, he gets up and grabs his keys by the mirror,
jumps in the car and speeds towards the airport,
feeling as if he has seen this all before:
the skyscrapers bending in his wake,
the road-kill dog with the accepting face,
and that old man’s stone-still countenance.
But he’s got no time for déjà vu; he’s got
to park and has already forgotten which gate
to go to. He wonders, Was it seven or eight?
as he checks the arriving flights. I promised I wouldn’t be late
he says to himself, glancing back at the screen– now completely
blank.
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