His Own Apollo
My friend is by no means Dracula or a werewolf,
but the full moon’s mostly lawless beauty
has never failed to tantalize him,
to lure him outdoors.
Tonight the gallivanting moon,
all systems go,
makes a pallid cascade in the Roman street,
while my spirited mentor relates,
over chamomile tea,
his once-upon-a-time penchant for “cruising.”
At first, he found unhampered freedom
in forest anonymity and horseplay,
and a kind of erotic royalty,
since, in his galvanizing “strolls”
(his tickling noun for them),
his Olympian blondness
and glittering gimlet eyes
made him “the belle of the ball”—
the besotted men’s clandestine lips
and fly-by-night hands
at sweet stations of his body,
a reckless Song of Solomon.
“At the witching hour,”
in the mesmerizing woods,
with his lingering or ablaze admirers,
sometimes he experienced
authentic ecstasy,
as if he could dwell forever
in the subsuming hallelujah and ellipsis
of his final orgasm,
or sing to his frenetic cohort
of al fresco confederates
and acolytes of moonlight,
like a vast-throated Pavarotti.
At stark sunup, he’d tiptoe back
to his milquetoast rooms,
his small shade-drawn oasis,
staving off his workday
or collegiate tussles
with a truant’s joys: a treasure trove
of shelled pistachios
and a pack of unfailing Camels.
My friend is by no means Methuselah,
though he’s white-haired,
devoted to the domestic nowadays,
the linnet’s aria and the owl’s call
are still thrilling to encounter.
Tonight, my untrammeled maestro confesses
he perceives the roll-call beauty
of foraging, at-the-ready men,
circling and coupling in the forest
with the will of conquistadors,
as more fleet and arresting than ever.
He insists that strolling nights
under the alluring moon,
when no one’s waiting for him,
is no longer worth his while.
As a buoyant elder, a riveting sage,
he’s vibrant but done with the hunt,
the unmonitored prowl.
He knows, to the marrow, how easily
the bracing woods can become
an overriding obsession
or an illusory escape.
Breathing in the ebullient nighttime air,
under the moon’s penetrating,
busybody gaze, in his invisible tie
and dress suit of solitude, all politesse,
he’s his own best company,
his own intoxicating Apollo.
