Elizabeth Arnold
Arc
I was
out of time before I started,the meyer lemon
blooming while full of fruit, our breezeway lettinga breeze through, its floor
smooth, that kind that stays cool
out of time before I started,the meyer lemon
blooming while full of fruit, our breezeway lettinga breeze through, its floor
smooth, that kind that stays cool
even in the worst
north Florida heat, so much of what we
don’t understand and I
was out I was
out of time, the lemons
rotting, Marcus Aurelius, while you
sat on your bronze horse
in one of the highest squares of Rome, the metal
cold, a replica
probably
—you
weren’t Greek
nor was the original of your statue
(for once) but I read you wrote
your masterpiece
—calling it not “Meditations” but
“To Myself”–
in Greek, the language of
first minds
as yours was, is
and out of time, you
riding and riding through the cold north on an
endless-seeming
string of campaigns,
all through the north and the east
until you caught some
foreign illness
or other
again and this time
died.
Elizabeth Arnold is the author of four books of poems, The Reef, Civilization, Effacement, and Life.