INFIDELITIES

You ask me why and I talk of the wounds that will not heal.
Blue velvet and white satin, now moth-eaten gray.
I gave my love Paris's silver apple; in return I got Eve's red.
I was young then.
foolish.
immortal.
All children are immortal until they learn to die.
Until I held him in my arms--his life draining away slow, like maple syrup.
Swords and guns and morality... it doesn't matter.
it doesn't remain.
The plate technonics of definition are constantly shifting and in life's meaningquakes all that's left...
is the Yankee's musket.
is Malakai's sword.
is an elated gasp and a belated hug.
That, in the end, was home.
Not white satin flesh under white satin sheets.
Not the myth of love, more changeable than gods.
But simply being there.
Suffering alongside always.
Persevering past mortal breathe.
Attending their funerals.
All this I present in empty explanation,
denying love as a priest denies his passions.