Lady In The Lighthouse Poem by Norman F. Santos

The raucous starlight could only extemporize
The chutzpa of a jocund seafaring crew—
That vigor, which ignites the forlorn sailing
Which remained unavailable inside the isolation
Of a gelid helm, where the walls and ceilings moan
Upon blotches of the effulgent full moon
Basking upon the hazy floor parquetry.
As I wrangled with the lullaby of somnolence
I self-consciously sever my scrawny aged fingers
Groping greedily by the steering wheel,
And parceling the immense myriad of tides
Of the devouring jaws of the open sea,
When I saw, from a sentry, a lady of mystique
Her rasping ropy hair wedged the luster
Of the illumination clasped by the lighthouse
Her billowing nightgown ceaselessly fluttered
With the waves that conceived and cradled
My seaward yearning, my cloistered flee.
She bought a pliant undulant hand in motion
Waving and careening, vexing confusion
And creating a phantasm in the gloom
Hues of her dawdling shadows by the sea
That inexorably feigned an optimistic anticipation
Upon the achy facet of my moon-paced wondering;
An endless sauntering in the ornate mind map,
I was enthralled by the harpoons of her expensive
Glasgow smile and her vague but arresting eyes
That had kissed the ring of the esoteric Capitan
And eerily, I had momentarily forgotten
The fractions and distractions that never elapsed
That had brought me to this nautical wandering
And jarringly, I had momentarily ambitioned
To dwell with the illustrious delusions
That I had unfurled in fortuity, by the sea,
In the lighthouse of tangential offerings.
The lighthouse shivered and cringed in the haze
Of a profound astigmatism in my gray eyes
Festooned with serrated and slivered hopes
And the mirage ebbed away with violent eddies
And I, alone and forever, the Capitan
Surrendered back into my forlorn searching.