Legends

Once I had a faithful unicorn
decked with silver bells and silken saddle.
We rode the sweetbriar hills and fragrant wood
from dusk to dawn, a frank and feral ride.

Quick he harked my clarion hunting horn.
How he bucked and moaned with me astraddle.
He found wild ways and all of them were good.
We rode astounded through new countryside.

This longing for my faithful unicorn
and the trappings of his ornate saddle
is more than I can bear. God knows I would
give all I own for one sweet midnight ride:

So sweetly pierced upon his ivory horn,
sweetly placed, so sweetly held astraddle.
Some claim love is a myth, but it was good
and sometimes lies, truth, legends can coincide.

The Professor's Wife Talks about Hard Things

Hard in the summer of my discontent,
drop worm-infested apples from the tree.
Gray Richard turns and drops a royal hint
to hard-assed, wriggling Cloe, young devotee.

He's riding a familiar hobbyhorse
as he rode me, not thirteen summers past.
His anxious wife of then still lived, of course:
to tits and ponytail, her kingdom lost.