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.