My Beautiful Mistress

My beautiful mistress
Says things like:

Walk with me in the garden
You won't find a shoe store

And she says:

Fighting brings out the beast of survival
Kills it rejoices sings and waves brightly colored flags
Unless their beast is stronger

My beautiful mistress
Wants to know why the government lets
The Blue Ridge Mountains turn gray then black
Disappearing in the soot in the wind where trees once talked

My beautiful mistress tells me of Goethe and autonomy
Bettina's threat and Christiane's slap
Olympians suffer from the concrete and the physical
Olympians shatter and are shattered by pettiness

My beautiful mistress
Takes classes rides horses the metro
Eats in sidewalk cafes a deli a pub

Running past fast food

Laughing in malls
She fails to find the poet's hangout so she
Makes her own and acts
Out the contours of her body
The lines of her soul as they
Come over her before the salad arrives

My beautiful mistress
Leaves for Rome in the morning
Flies to Frankfurt or Milan
Vienna Istanbul Damascus Troy
Fresno

She climbs the Alps with two angels and a dog
Swims the Channel like a tunnel
Fears thoughts of circular nowheres
Fights central concerns in philosophy with weight-lifting
I am tired—postcards intimate

My beautiful mistress
Showers with me in the forest
Blue and green and brown at dawn
Because four power plants closed down
Or the wind is smashing
Adjusting
The gray until tomorrow

Studies take time!
She yells through the cascade

Culture is the accident after the sale!