Byzantium is no mythy place. I live here.
Yellowjackets turn aggressive
and bumblebees bump insistently into asters.
The ditches outside town fill to flood with goldenrod,
flame-shaped heads nodding in wind,
and soybeans sweep gold, wave
upon wave, fields emanating light until
the trees catch: honeylocust, then ash, and finally
the thrashing willows turn to yellow straw.
We’re smack dab in glittering Byzantium,
a long stretch through a pitted field
as chirruping children board the bus
and marriages break up, because or in spite of us.

What shall we do?
Head tra-la to the mall for back-to-school sales,
to find damned Byzantium again
as every display demonstrates perfection,
all the arrows flashing You Are Here.
Not young nor old, but weathering
the stretch that no one talks about, for fear—
and yellow is very in this year.
Imagined ecstasy of vision, this prerecorded siren’s song,
dizzy parade of music video and windowed mannequin,
they urge: even you may essay timelessness.
Here in Byzantium we find Byzantium’s trace:
Victoria’s Secret models with Theodora’s face.

Those bowls of light were always a thin broth,
though for years I held up only happy endings (try this one on)
doing my best to ignore peripheral movement, feral
whispers of the undergrowth. No more.
I sing down time and all the ravages,
a wild watering, embrace the mud
Byzantium was built upon, eternal
slurry that was always there.
We fracture, fragment, patch it up
and catch what light we can these flawed, mosaic days.
Whatever’s frozen, ageless, perfect I discard
to build anew, shard by razor shard.