ODE TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Mystic cathedrals, vacant of any member,
Tower over Samoa, beneath a white and blue sky.
Stevenson wanders, with a shot of rye,
To his dim wine cellar, in late December.

Musing on which combination to ingest,
He states his face changes, daily, with ease.
His wife sees him lost to aesthetic, dark seas;
In the winter of his life, as a seer, he is best.

Enraptured with Osiris, Apollo and Pan,
He chooses a fine Bordeaux, and wipes his sweaty brow.
Jekyll's guilty psyche is alive within this man.

Suffering from lunacy, the flights his drinks allow
Produce peculiar transformations which terrify at times.
And in horror he collapses, for uncommitted crimes.

THE ACROPOLIS

Colonnades of white, erected by the sea,
Clad with many towering vines,
Cradle the arched temple splendidly,
Where one breathes in the wind of wines.

Athena walks with golden hair,
By hedgerows of green,
In the summer air,
Passing through the world unseen.

And with every path she paces on,
A redolent, wafting, delicious scent
Is rendered to the Parthenon,
And to every fragrant bough that is bent,
As her vassals, invisible, duly rise
To the realm of Zeus, in the azure skies.

THE SNOW-COVERED HILL

I ventured out to a hill near a forest
Beneath a sullen sky, seeking peace and rest.
Feathery flakes fell on the soft, sloping dell,
Adjacent to the pines, I crossed a frozen well.

Silence reigned in the timberland of white.
Every bough was barren, shaken by the cold.
The chilly wind whispered in the day's moonlight,
And seemed to echo a sapience of old.

I heard my footsteps breach the still,
Of the virginal field, of the shallow hill.
The flurries spoke of reason, coupled with grace.

Their soft epiphanies were of fleecy downs,
As they covered reeds of chestnut browns:-
One often finds God in a lonely place.

CENTRAL PARK (2012)

The damask of the sky, over the city cleaves,
As families walk by, to boughs of yellow leaves.
Chestnuts sold, by a lake of toy sails,
Add a fragrance to New York, as daylight pales.

The noises blaring from winding cars
Are distant in the park, where one can listen
To the coo of pigeons, as skyscrapers glisten:
To the south they rise, to the urban stars.

A Republican reads the Journal, as a Democrat walks by,
In the circus-like fanfare, they see eye to eye,
If only for a moment, by a strawberry field.

They are dizzy in the potions that musicians yield.
Children, at the zoo, feed ponies, licking ice cream,
As lovers walk the promenades, drunken gypsies dream.

(From Sonnets Of Dusk And Dawn  P. 71 / Published With The Author's Permission)

KISSING IN THE WOODS

We walk along beneath whited trees,
By snow-clad hedges of frozen grass,
Caressed by the frosty breeze.
The romantic hours pass
With a delicacy of sweet delight.
How lovely you look tonight!-
In your furs you receive the cold with ease.
Let me kiss you until the seas of your eyes
Are released in an ecstasy of bating sighs.
Let me ravish your lips with heat,
And feel your heartbeat
Go wild in the cold.
And then let me but repeat
Those kisses of sapphire, rubies and gold!