Amnesic

The poem drained us, pressurized meaning from
marrow becoming a tsunami of DNA colliding against your
tourist distance, binoculars dangling over your shirt's
hibiscus saturating your lie into the mundane of us
before hijacking the last flight out. You'll show slides
 
back home. Guests will feign understanding while checking
out the new BBQ instead. Your melancholy undercurrent  
of nature shifts the patio bricks beneath their feet;  
you pretend to refill a drink while staggering toward  
the memory of crest when we were face to face
 
in the composition of it: the instant of discovery  
destined to be desecrated by the truth you hid. It will keep
through the cold, Canadian Winter until a springtime thaw  
reveals the scent of  us. You'll explain, "It's just the past...
I mean, trash..." to anyone who asks. You'll shower  
 
but the odor will linger like a fish-stuck dinner. The distance  
distracts when a certain word is said and no one seems  
to understand the centuries knotted into the history  
of it. Guests will complain about the game and lack  
of beer in the fridge. You'll "laugh", longing for the quiet  
 
of creation instead, just one more second to experience
the coronation of the muse which enabled you to bear  
the sceptered mystery of verse by atlas verse before a jealous  
and bewildered world, making you more than just the liar you are.  
You'll feel so alone even with wife and children underfoot while
 
wondering where I've gone, if I've survived or forgiven you.
I'll be in the Provence savoring dinner, not questioning once  
because the 'tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual  
virginity of the soul.' Oh, I may hear a sudden twinge of words
over coffee and dessert triggering a distantly forgotten wave,
 
right before thinking (as I have a baker's dozen times in my life),
"What the hell was his name?"  
 
~