Elizabeth Arnold – Arc

I was
out of time before I started,

the meyer lemon
blooming while full of fruit, our breezeway letting

a 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.