A SOUTH SEA ISLAND

Especially when after the white snow

Piles up and a snow of city soot

Grays it and it turns to slush

And the gray slush mirrors the gray sky

And the avenue trees are black and naked,

I want to go where it is always Spring,

A South Sea Island, or any island paradise,

Like Gauguin, go native, maybe even paint

A little, an easel set up on the salt-sea beach,

Polynesian beauties, stripped to the waist

Surround me, hibiscus and breadfruit,

Manao tupapau, Spirit of the Dead

Watching. Of course, I will never go, son

Of a cold climate, will never abandon

Wife, dogs, house, children, life

Here at The University, love. But

The idea plays on in my mind like a movie,

And impels, like the swell of the sea,

Grand romantic gestures, that freeze

In my poems, raw ice dangling at the eaves.