You remind me of Marcus Aurelius
with a drink in his hand
the scent of marble and stone
and dust
stuck to feet from all that walking
although your walk is always back to
the stoic way of thinking I never
saw you smile
and by the time
you asked ‘what are you thinking’ I had no
wisdom,
no courage, no justice or
whatever else you said temperance
had transformed
into a temper
I controlled by biting
my tongue which is better than what I might have done
and I thank Marcus Aurelius for explaining
we fade from memory
but there is no way he could have known the statue
has been unearthed, that parts of Marcus Aurelius’s marble
legs are now on display
along with his head and one right arm
and because we’ve seen the statue
we remember
the dead I never
saw any look of delight
not even the times when we had sex.
The emptiness of those applauding hands
Alison Eastley lives in Tasmania, Australia with my two sons in a small house in the conservative 'Bible-belt' North West coast with too many Evangelists knocking on doors. Nevertheless, she finds that living near the ocean is a beautiful experience with the sounds of the waves being an everyday event.