Beauty in the Rain

If you fancy that you have an eye for beauty, test it on a rainy day.
A cold and foggy day that wears no make-up.
Test it in the shades of gray that consume the sun and rob the flowers of their colors,
leaving them forlorn in dingy places like tired and aging ballerinas in faded dancing clothes;huddling in the drafty wings of empty opera houses.
Gaze across the rooftops and the chimneys, painted like Utrillo's Parison, the canvas of the smoke and fog of a dying afternoon in winter.

It takes no eye for beauty to find it on a lovely day.
It thrusts itself upon you in the sunshine and the warm.
But it hides; becomes aloof, elusive in the cold and in the rain.

Bourbon Street at Dusk - New Orleans Tribute

Time to get up now, you tired old sinner. You've been resting all day

behind those drapes you closed this morning,just as the sun was coming up

and the day people were beginning to stir.

They're turning on your lights now, so it's time to get ready...

cake on the make-upand put those sparkling things in your hair...

those neon lights that attract the convention guys.

Across the way, some of your friends are taking battered old horns out of
their cases. A banjo's tuning up.And somebody's fooling around with an old
upright piano. Any minute now, they'll be busting loose with a hand-me-down

version of jazz.

Trying to hold onto the music that all started somewhere down here by the river. And you saw it all.

I guess you've seen about everything, come to think of it. Heard every sad

story there is to tell, and every bum joke.You've heard the steady step of
reformers chasing sinners drinking Hurricanes from plastic cups.

That's your thing, old girl. This is "New Orleens" as the tourists say,and
you're the star of the show. Curtain's going up, so start the show.

You lovable old phony. You're not half as tough as you pretend. I know...I've
seen you crying when you thought no one was watching.

Seasons

The seasons are my undoing.
They make of me a fickle lover.
I see Autumn's face
in every face I see
And I am overcome.
I cannot recall the look of Spring
that held my fancy
in the soft kiss of a quiet rain last April.
All that was put aside
when first I felt the sweet, fresh
breath of Fall
my latest love,
yet, most likely, not my last.
For it is the way of vagrant hearts
to trade one enchantment for another
to hold one for a little while
before the search begins
for one that will replace it.
But for now, I will let Autumn's
charms caress me,
Before December's snows will part us.
Then I'll forget his face
as I forgot the face of April
when first I felt October's kiss.