Ralph Monday is Professor of English at RSCC in Harriman, TN. Hundreds of poems published. Books: All American Girl and Other Poems, 2014. Empty Houses and American Renditions, 2015. Narcissus the Sorcerer, 2015. Bergman’s Island & Other Poems, 2021, and a humanities text, 2018. Member Lincoln Memorial University Literary Hall of Fame.

au revoir mon amour

this time when you walk
away

don’t go into the forest
you might get
lost

but you’re there
already

make a shelter of hemlock
branches
or

find a cave to crawl into
build a fire if you have
matches

try to find the light
as a guide to your
blindness

reflection upon your ruined
mind

know that an owl flying
in daytime

has
lost its way do not follow

like the many stags whose
trail you sniffed upon
only

to discover they broke
off their horns
in you

left no velvet to soothe
reddened thighs
marked

you with their yellowed musk
stay in the underworld
that you carved out
with

sophistic eyes its safer there
and if you hear dogs baying
in

the distance do not worry
they are not looking for
you