The Conservatory Poem by John Lars Zwerenz

Your song is a compelling, melodious flower,
Which wavers gently through the alabaster parlor,
On autumn afternoons when the piano is caressed
By soft, slender hands, resplendently dressed.
With the liveries of summer, glowing and gold,
The myrtle-scented breezes outside renew the old,
As they swirl around the oak trees with a misty, leafy ring,
Absorbing the lutescent sunlight, amid bending boughs, wavering.
Your fingers of white upon the ebony keys
Breed a manifold delight, a mosaic of rapture,
As your halcyon fragrance reaches out to capture
From beneath your pretty knees
A poet and a sage.
What symphonies bleed in this timeless age
Down the wall of vines,
Of stucco, terra-cotta and violet wines!
Your rhapsodies
Are as zephyrs which languishing flee
To the redolent seas
Of ecstasy.
And after your recital in the vast music hall,
We shall wander on the grass,
As the tender hours gently pass,
Like sunlight on the vine-clad wall.
We shall picnic on the verdant lawn,
And your hair, of a dreamy, summer dawn,
Parted in the middle, shall on your shoulders lay,
Long, straight and raven, darker than the night.
And beholding such a beauteous sight,
I shall be rendered mute as a work of clay.
And I shall love you there beneath that kendal-green tree,
As you gaze upon the conservatory,
And its lily-white chasm
With liquid-filled eyes,
Struck with a fair, delicious spasm
Beneath the absinthe-tinted skies.

~ JOHN LARS ZWERENZ