My steps clank to the gaoler's key
to become, within, handmaidens to thorned plants
acting as fuselage along the building's exterior.
Afar, a white seagull sits as a bespectacled tourist
gracing a buoy like a madras shirt.
Early stars in an afternoon sky
are expansive in Chateau Lafitte finery,
the Rothschilds of the universe playing
a cosmic baccarat.
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A girl in a brandy snifter of a dress --
dark, sensual, runs through tomes of my mind.
It's a hall of mirrors there;
the radiating glass of the sea,
twilight splendour in tall grass,
the hands of thick mahogany chairs
grimacing against perspiring walls.
I sponge water like a good midshipman
off the brow of a leaking vessel.
Nowhere are there signs of more than
partial seepage though smoke in the
back corridors exists from the fiery aguandine.