venus in montrose

She had gone on hiatus from her terminal felicity,

The languid lassitude having progressed from ennui to irritant

(As one second-tier deity in the pantheon bitterly noted

Immortality is just another word for fucking monotonous)

Coming to this plane sans the flourish and fol-de-rol

Normally accompanying earthly descents,

Having arrayed herself in such raiments

As seemed apropos in such a place,

Tresses tucked away under a stained Farmall cap,

Figure somewhat obscured by a hoodie and camo pants

(Yet drawing more than her share of too-long glances,

Their progenitors sensing something they hadn’t apprehended before,

The provenance of what stood before them

But dimly understood yet clearly a thing apart)

And she spent an indeterminate time in that scruffy burg,

Its one-block main drag footed by the schoolmarm-staid courthouse,

The gas wells and second-tier chain-store concerns,

Chance encounters with doe and bobcat on the few side streets,

Returning to her eternal domicile as inauspiciously as she had came,

And if one of her compatriots deigned to show interest

In respect to her time among her lessers

(The inhabitants of the terra firma

Generally regarded with a dollop of noblesse oblige

And a considerable helping of scornful disinterest)

She would become somewhat taciturn, hesitant

Characteristics almost unknown in this locale

And she would speak, almost in wonder,

Of how those she had sauntered among,

Saddled with their inherent imperfection,

The constraints yoked upon who they were

And the realm they inhabited

(Even the landscape, glaciers gifting them

A higgledy-piggledy of lakes, the dumpling-esque hills

Over-dramatically christened the Endless Mountains

Short on true grandeur or majesty)

Yet still cognizant, still struggling to attain

An ideal of beauty which they could never be privy to,

And for some time afterward it was not uncommon

To see upon her unspeakably striking visage

A faraway look bordering on discontent.