aghast, I'd not seen her for ages

a ghost of love my mind engages

but fate had turned cruel pages

 

beauty once soared from these features

hottest among human creatures

Nefertiti of love's teachers

 

still young, my experience rare

she'd flown me gently to her lair

the first woman I witnessed bare

 

two hawks preen on a pyramid

pecking morsels of new killed kid

hearing new tombs receive their lid

 

winged fingers so mightily fond

her snaking tongue a fairy wand

the rarest pupil-teacher bond

 

a tryst of falcons on a crag

rose so svelte no hint of drag

yet now she's but a sagging hag

 

they caught us at it in the end

she wound up convicted and penned

forty years such magic cant rend

 

I try hello, ventured to smile,

in red eyes nests mummified bile

between our souls a raging Nile

 

for she's lost in a foreign land

where age plucked at that febrile hand

and sex dried out in ancient sand