A Burning Forehead

The last of sunset lit
A heap of rumpled sheets
Like scalloped, golden dunes.
Centuries ago, Keats
Wrote an identity
Equation for beauty
As synonym for truth,

Unintentionally
Exposing the weakness
Of merely being true—
Unalloyed, truth’s stillness
Makes a barren heaven.
Unalloyed, beauty’s just
Another empty jar.

The lovers in the bed
Had shaped a humid mound
Of linens once they did
Catch up to each other.
It took sunset to turn
Beauty back to desert
Dunes glowing in dry truth.