CLEOPATRA AT MERSA MATRUH
So many shades of blue
existing together
in a sea of clear water
rippling over a beach
of fine white sand.
A massive rock rose
out of the sea,
hollowed by the slow
grind of erosion
into three natural rooms.
In one, a sunken pool
emptied and filled
as the tide ebbed and flowed.
It was here, to her capital,
Mersa Matruh, that Cleopatra
retreated with Antony
after the disaster at Actium,
knowing she’d be blamed for the defeat.
All day she bathed in the limpid pool
or sat in the sheltered cool.
She gazed up at the strange shapes
of the water-and-wind-worn rocks,
bright in the blaze of morning,
violet gray in the dimming light.
AFTER THE APOCALYPSE
Back then they thought
that if the human race was doomed,
at least they’d be preserving
an archive of earthly sounds
on a gold-plated record
aboard the Voyager spacecraft,
like a message in a bottle
tossed into outer space
for extraterrestrials to discover
on the far shores of the universe
on a happier planet than ours,
these last traces of our lives:
beatings of a heart,
soft mwah of a mother’s kiss,
sounds of wind, crashing surf
and falling rain,
footsteps and laughter,
the cry of a chimpanzee,
Bach’s harmonies
and Mozart’s melodies
and Chuck Berry singing
“Johnny B. Goode:”
Go go go Johnny go—
unfaded echoes
of our lost existence.
Anne Whitehouse’s poems A Flexible Object Bends to a Quickening Flow. Strawberry Fields.were published last year in Borderless Journal.
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