Sometimes the rain shines
Just when the sun reigns,
And that was the way it is
Beyond those French doors
That late afternoon here
In this mind’ s early evening
Where they still fade in
That cool color Polaroid,
Pastel shades of her prom dress,
A bowl of double peonies,
Promising, precocious,
Trying, trying to open.
•
Their friend and he were tight
Tight-rope walkers, self-taught
Taut-trope-talkers, stalking
Jamb-up, arm-in-arm
And caroling to lucky stars
Their bars and rebars,
The night a carousel
Of tryst and troth,
Of casual carousals,
Cocky arousals,
Pitching the dark to the dark.
(Streetlight and moth,
Reader, she married both.)
•
But then there he was,
In the morning’ s mourning,
Soi-disant
Proustian mignon,
Aesthetic ascetic
And Kansas rube
Reducing his thought
To a bouillon cube
That no one hot
Ought ever pore over.