Better Living Through Introspection

Dinner in Lebanon, rewritten

When we departed for dinner in Lebanon
the gladiator was still a general unleashing hell
in Ridley’s epic, so we left him behind and feasted
in the light of a campfire underneath the cypress trees,
underneath the stars on the side of a white mountain; hungry
from our journey, we gorged on roasted lamb, on goat’s cheese,
on olives and dates and figs, on sweet garlicky hummus,
drowning ourselves in water and wine - the world was full
of nervous anticipation, and we shoveled into the empty pauses
the history and lineage of our families, the bloodlines that tied us
to a lakeside city on the plains where our parents’ parents
shared time unlike space.

When we returned separately to our new worlds I found
the gladiator dying face up in the sands of the coliseum,
and there was a kiss hanging between us. I can’t recall
how long I burned buoyantly under its pressure…not long
enough, just short of an eternity; but as the gladiator bled
I realized already my mistake witnessing in our kiss
the harbinger of graceful summer when in reality I tasted
winter wrapped in a satin promise. That kiss
was the gladiator’s ringed hand, gliding through
the wheatfields of his dream-sequence home, caressing
each stalk in order to know the lay of the land. I should
have given more time to his trials than I did
to our dinner in Lebanon.