Gaylord Brewer
• October 25, 2004
Apologia to Every Woman I Ever Wanted
Impossible. Sacrament of failure. Received, no doubt,
as it ever was and ever shall be. Yet this morning,
bowed to a new week, I feel that I might offer some token.
Acknowledge, perhaps, your disorienting power.
Or proclaim honestly I forgive you your arbitrary will,
demands of costly tribute. I was trying, you see
to celebrate a better way. The cause of your distrust
I’m resigned to never knowing. And yes, as to matters
unspoken that night, between candles and sacrificed plates,
matters that eye and hand and even music failed,
its those I regret, the unspoken that I’d like back this morning.
While as to what harrowing rituals I did enact then,
testaments for which I wined feebly into position,
I believed every word. Even if you turned suddenly
from the table, dark and iridescent as you rose for purse
and the door. Or even if, on more than one blessed occasion
I must confess, you took my startled hand and led,
in unearthly beauty, to the miraculous altar of your bed.
