Remembering Naples’ Women with Large Owl’s Eyes on the Beach

 

Would they remember few centuries from now

how reasonably rich Americans used to gather

in Naples, Florida, in that garden size of a town,

every evening on the beach to applaud the Sun,

 

the great acrobat and artist, dying of his taboo kiss

with the eager sea in that greatest U.S. pagan mass

while painting for his love the sky in bands of orange

and red and ethereal turquoise and sapphire just before

 

first stars started coming through? Will the future poets

and peoples too still remember the romance of the dusk

and would they swiftly then die to their diurnal numbness,

 

raising once more their once limp, flaccid wings mistaken

for mere hanging shadows, too weak to erect fine temples?

And would their lovers too grow once more wise owl eyes?