Scattered Gutters

       Variation on a familiar theme

And the sun stretched forth his orange-yellow
hand, and groomed the city streets, and
followed the country roads, and even scanned
the island retreats for the slender hand he so
longed to hold; and finding none of his
desired worth strolling through the day,
He reclined - to reflect on Cabernet, and
determined to assign his son the task;
the son, who with his father’s borrowed light
patrols the undeserted streets at night;

And through the dank alleyways of beer-glass broken gutters,
his pale arm crept softly over our simple heads, and
under concrete bridges and over cardboard beds,
in over-populated three-in-the-morning bars, and
theatres filled with song and dance and weeping bards -
he filtered through those sound awake and sleeping
to find the earthy hand his father now desired instead
of the emaciated sky;
but nothing here on earth - and nothing through the sea
could be gathered to compare
with her infinitely finite blue supply
of cloud-swept grace and star-borne flare.