Apocryphya

Many stories are lost in the old Hebrew Bible—

the love affairs between the heroes and the stars.

Eve and Betelgeuse, for starters, begat

the ancient race of artisans today

represented by arc welders, while Adam

made love for a whole year to cold river mud only.

Solomon and the Pleiades, too, in secret

abandon revolved an adventure now dim

with its dawning.  Their fire

notoriously reduced the king to ashy

humility and he left his gaudy harem

to live with these sisters on a wind-swept hillside

alone.  And Judith adored Antares' perfect roundness,

his splendid independence peering through

the rent in her canvas roof.  What solace

they gave each other in their old age!  But Samson,

whose shorn apotheosis in the crashing temple

is all our fallen scripture records,

blind Samson had a second ending

in Sirius' glory, washed quite clean,

disarmed, unstrung, refulgent, up

till late on the blue-white heat of her faithful breast.