She who also stoops to conquer
now gazing upon the repose of later years
In a position of recline
Resting on her tobacco stained Lazy Boy
in the small den that used to be a third bedroom
when the children would visit many years ago
But the miles and the time between have
made them strangers who speak on the phone occasionally

There is no computer upon her desk
The old Remmington served her well enough in the day
a dusty old friend that had seen her through
all of her books and three marriages
Picking up a dog eared book of poetry which opens
by itself from countless repetitions upon a
particular favorite

She gazes myopicaly at the words she knows by heart
They remind her of abandoned love from the summers
of her youth
A spark extinguished before it began as a holiday by
the seaside becomes quickly lost in the bustle of autumn
and school, always school

Placing her reading glasses on her ample bosum
Sipping a gin and tonic, reciting the words aloud
she begins

" Your eyes are like two piss holes in a snowbank
long discarded aging yellowed pits
Leading to a bottomless soul
Vacant and empty
Like a summer house in winter
blackened by the long descent
From equatorial bliss

Your skin the color of baleen
Left too long upon the thresher's floor
Your lips the color of innuendo
baked by the desert sun
As you come to me with
bits of string and cuckoo clocks
Determined manipulations of unknown origin"

Toffee nosed bastard, she laughs as she closes the book
and turns out the light