What is to the waking eye more beautiful
than coming into Lackawanna Station
in the first red ochre day of spring,
a slant light in the engine’s canticle,
the white forever dusting its libation
on the ashes of a reckoning,

a souvenir of New Orleans, a curtain
in the guest house room on Royal Street
with morning sundust lighting yellow ochre
and Elizabeth on waking in a certain
sprawl of legs on linen, hand on sheet,
the hand that slipped the gold clasp of her choker.

White Elizabeth at night stood tall
into the canopy, a bourbon twist,
café au lait, beignet, Elizabeth
who led me past the antiques in the hall
into an ancient bed. Her feet I kissed,
her thighs, and slept with bourbon on my breath.

This morning on the station bench, a sprite
alert among the ghostly winter shades
sits cross-legged, eating breakfast as in bed.
A gold croissant. Her nested coat folds white,
her morning hair beneath the balustrades
curls absinthe raven black around her head.