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.