His haste
escaped reminiscences,
Gently, softly,
rained down sympathy;
Soon gone:
a smile,
a woman,
a curtain beside his bed,
remembrance ungratified.

Fingers counted time
with inward breath arrested,
a woodland path
a single gorgeous eye:
all canvases designed with grace
of butterflies wings
closing upon a troubled moment.

Turning away
the vista of winding bays,
old scenes waved
out to the blue ocean
secure from winds of heaven,
from gusts of gilt letters
put there by men.

Tired Venetian footmen,
wistfully lacking
breeze-swept twilights,
they are shadows painted
by blood on little mahogany tables
overturned and black.

A lily waves back and forth
white and broken off
with glory,
fighting time,
memory,
imagination,
on silvery ancestral lawns.