To A Poetess I Loved Before Poem by David McLansky

Ah my dear, my eternal bride,
If love is timeless, why do you hide
And who’s that sleeping next to you,
Time’s gone awry and has lost a screw;
It seems your love was too soon reborn,
And I, a late boomer born,
You rejected me with teenage scorn;
I marked your “growth”, my soul forlorn;
And then we really got off the track;
You were reborn in war-torn Iraq;
They insisted that you wear a veil,
I tried a peak and was sent to jail.
Now I languish in Pandahar
In a town not very far
From where you reside as a babe,
God needs to fix His astrolabe.
The worst rebirth, I live to tell,
I found you in an old motel,
Making love in an adjoining room
You a bride and he the groom;
I sat down with my jug of corn
And swilled it ‘till I felt reborn
I broke down your motel door,
And found you laying on the floor;
You spoke to me in a Southern twang,
Thought me the waiter, up you sprang
And grabbed my jug of new moonshine,
And kicked and scratched ‘till I was blind;
And so my love Time is out of whack,
We no longer ride a parallel track;
Your hair is frizzy you sweat a lot,
Your gait is long, you often trot,
Hair grows wild beneath your arms,
That’s how they like it down on the farm;
What’s happened to my English Maid
Who bathed a lot and often shaved.