Published on: 1/1/2016
Antipodes

Nobody worries in the summer swelter
unless some-other-body tells them to
for reasons necessarily obscure,
because it's common knowledge that the cure
for tropic doldrums is the pas de deux
which never fails to render timely shelter

from any harm a couple stands to fear.
This benison is sandwiched in between
a slice of fondly kneaded leavened bread
and wafer made from pounded bones of dead
philosophers. The grass grows thick and green
in privileged regions of a hemisphere—

if not next door, then on the other side
of Mother Earth— no more a matter for
review by clerics in the Vatican
or Mecca (Please, dear Lord, not that again!)
than rounds of mild distress one must endure
till every needless teardrop has been cried.