The Temple of Walton

While home from Greece an old classmate I met dumbfounded me.

In Walmart where she wore a badge; “My Name is Beverly.”

Ere now I’d flown; had skipped a stone off the Aegean Sea,

And had extolled the ruined shrines of great Antiquity;

“O Parthenon, you resurrect triumphant Pericles.

Across millennia infuse me with your lucid breeze;

Ecstatically I now inhale your ancient sapience...”

(But now this chance encounter would arrest my eloquence).

Think not that Aphrodite gagged my sage verbosity,

Nor think that Eros had beguiled my calm tranquility.

The service employee unleashed no locked-up lover’s pain—

My memory of her was full of pity and disdain.

Yet now her awkward stance had grown to straight stability!

Her shaky eyes, once locked in glass, were confident and free.

Her voice; that weakly quavered then, now purred serenity—

Where was the misfit I despised whose name was “Beverly?”

What oracle foretold this grand transfiguration?

What deity prescribed this novel dispensation?

I thought my travels cultured me above my homebound peers

Yet now I wondered if I’d even reached the threshold years.

Olympic gods, now hear my cry of blatant heresy:

Amidst the summer discounts lie the greatest mystery.

You gods are not as lofty as the tall commercial shelf

That hides the mystic passage twixt a past and future Self.

—harold rain

How to get YOUR poetry in ARTVOICE!

In the Margins occasional features poetry by local writers. The poetry editor is Florine Melnyk. Submissions of no more than five poems and no more than 10 pages in length can be sent by e-mail to florine@starcherone.com or by mail to Florine Melnyk, Poetry Editor, Artvoice, 810 Main St., Buffalo NY 14202. Please include a self addressed stamped envelope to have manuscripts returned.