Another Medieval Romance

Abelard and Héloïse
drink milk oolong tea together.
Steam masks each from the other.

Dawn draws its curtain of blurred colors.
Function follows form
at this untutored hour.
Outside, the campus lawn
is cluttered with morning’s colors
like a child’s playroom:
all innocent spring greens,
plum purples, blushy pinks.

For her twenty-sixth birthday,
he bought her a little clay teapot,
red like a guilty rose
or a Chinese funerary soldier.
So heavy and sweet.

She’s teaching a course
on medieval lyric poetry.
The material reminds her of sixties music—
Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane.
She imagines herself in a nun’s habit,
running after a creaky-wheeled wagon,
yellow hair escaping her veil.
The smell of milk soothes, bores.
Try putting gunpowder in your tea.

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