The Mouth of Dr. Vergetis *

Greece bore you
so serious
and sent with your luggage
promises of soft goddesses
lost in chapped crevaces.

The ruins
sunsets
hide from us
And vague indifference
to anything other than
the hubris of infection
drapes a stoic visage.

Little can melt the doctor from disease

But we search
for echoes
of warm wine on Minoan beaches
of warm women
and vainly map the lineaments of your face
to the center of its labyrinth
a surpirse
a mouth.

shapely and bright,
it brags a clean separation
from surrounding blankness
and in one purposeful pull of upturned lips
we glimpse the laughter
that quietly haunts you--
your tool of wonton artifice
marked with wear
and drying memories

we revolt
against the lightning of our bodies
and watch from invisible cliffs
for messages
in your simple enumeration of medicines...

lips prepare to defend an ancient property
that renders treatment useless
we hear nothing
save a trumpeted sigh
whose course outran
the brain that paved its victory

In this slipped verse
we imagine
Your first woman

This mouth is an old one.

It belonged to Pheidippies
who shared glory with an extinguished breath.
It was the jaw of Leonides
commanding legions toward a noble end.
And it served the heart
So Theseus could taste Ariadne...

We can not know
how Time will shape this viceroy of healing
We teeter
Afraid to fight
for the subtleties of passion
and drown
halfway toward our Aegean.