The wind sinks back
into the pines and scrub-oak,
and the sea is as dark as burnished
silver. The tassels on the awning
are still. Grace's fan slips
from her fingers, and Lavinia
nods over her embroidered daisies.

I shut my sketchbook,
with a turn of my eye
bringing a northern midnight.
If one should sigh in her sleep
I would take up my pencil
and blink once more
into the noonday dazzle
of a scratched page.

But they are dreaming there
on my velvet coverlets. Now
I take the skeins of jewels
and coil them into their straw hair.
I open their muslin dresses; their
breasts are, after all,
mother of pearl.

Grace's fingernails
stray to her nipple, and
Lavinia's legs open
to the stone-framed window, where
I squat on the sill
with eyes like slippery moons.

Then, of a sudden, become a vaulting
stallion with frost-clouded nostrils,
I leap out into the flurrying
white wind; for here
is the servant-girl with the clinking
tea-things, and the sisters
are rubbing their guileless eyes.