Hesperide For M Poem by r james sterzinger

I am finally ready
to confront
a most untidy
Augean Stable

I really want to get back to
some sort innocence
I may or may not have had
as a child
that I have lost
somewhere, somehow
like a pinch full of pennies
out of a blind man's cup

all of my thoughts rattled away
long, ago
they had the chutzpah
to take me where they went
and went I did
a long way down
a road that was never mine
in the first place
but was more of the devil's own.

but now I come home
having met a Hesperide
who gave me apples
of sunrise
to take with me

so I smile now
while the rain drowns
the marigolds outside
in the blue planter
that is cut from
an old blue barrel

so I smile now
while the thunder claps
and others run for cover
under beds with the dust bunnies

so I smile
because she gave me gold
while I was stuck mining coal
caught like a canary in a cage
desperately
trying to hang on
not wanting to die
quite yet.

she gave me gold
not because she had it
but because she had been
down that same path
and had the map
that showed
the way home