Coffee at a little table
in a gray Formica dining hall.
I’ve just lent you a dollar
until your next paycheck arrives.
Your beard is modestly streaked.
Your focus on the poetry
of Robert Graves already feels
stale as yesterday’s croissant.
In class you worked over Milton’s
Samson until his hair fell out
and Delilah went home with
someone not so S & M.
I took notes that still frighten
and appall me. I pinned a slick
airbrushed Playboy bunny
into my notebook, turned her in
like a criminal caught in the act.
Nothing like the White Goddess,
she didn’t even roil the coffee
you sipped with tiny sips that
didn’t seem conspiratorial
until you fixed on the killing
of JFK. You unraveled
that plot for the rest of your life—
books and essays, even videos
on the Warren Commission’s flaws.
Those videos depict your beard
still correctly angled against
the familiar planes of your face.
Would the White Goddess agree
that the authentic conspiracy
remains embedded in the dark?
Has she forgiven your apostasy
for the sake of modern history?
Like garnets winking underground,
the facts deploy. My late life
email evoked a gruff salute from you.
Before I could embellish it
you died, leaving the Goddess
roaming the streets of Hartford
with her pallid sheath tattered,
the last page of her address book
torn out and tossed to the breeze.
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