Ataraxía

The dog, drowsing gently on the green couch
With half-shut eyes as though opiated,
Cuts a figure less blissful and serene
Than that the portraitist captured in oil
Wherein she smiles red-collared and happy
As befitting a creature untroubled by sin
Who has no fretful need for anxiety.

Moreover, the sky, nearly unclouded
Sheds a warm beam of light on the wooden
Walling which closes the patio round
And mulch, and what remains of backyard trees
Unhewn in the building of the stone pool
On whose terrace the low wicker chairs sit,
Though the season is cold, soon to be used
When February turns to March, and then
April inaugurates the season gold
Of leaf and lantern, and brings the Mayfire.

For I suspect, O, Lantern of the Lord,
That we shall greet one another anew
With happier aspects than when I penned
“Kabul” last Spring on the ruins of love
For first in the last four-measure of years
When Winter came and enveloped the sun
I spent no nights in the walls of the ward
Self-admitted or driven by constraint
And of myself I believe my frail fans
Grown not so frail, have mastered the expanse
Daedalus-like of the weltering air
Sufficient to fly nor melt in the sun
Ikarosesque, by vainglory undone.

Benjamin Rose is a poet born and raised in the D.C. area. His work has appeared in The Dillydoun Review, The Button Eye Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Last Resort Literary Review, as well as the self-published collection The Road Of Glass. He studies creative writing and Islamic civilization at The Catholic University Of America.