Luxembourg Gardens at Twilight

If I lived in the nineteenth century
I would take up one of those six-foot long

tapers and go through these gardens
like a butler, touching the tip of flame

to the air itself, leaving in my wake
chandeliers of haze to inform the early evening

and keep night from the marble vases,
the fountain, the concentric flowers, for I know

nothing of this will remain in the morning
when the sun's undiscriminating glare

will prowl these lanes like a bully,
cuffing everything into shadow and chalk,

a black and white world where these Victorian
couples, arm in arm, as muted as crinoline,

could no longer stroll, their lives flickering
like fireflies in and out of the manicured paths.

Copyright © 2003 James Doyle All rights reserved
from River Styx
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission