We’d recommend them to anyone—
As nice, but pricy (which is a lie)—
Took our breakfast on the Lowes’
Ephesian patio by that pool Mr. Lowe
Disguised as a pond, which was cerulean
And imaginary, tickling our prostrate appetites—
Naturally dormant after those hours,
They seemed like eons, of untroubled slumber
In the steady susurruration and aroma
Of evening rain, which everywhere
Is distinct as love, flying, crawling things
Testing our fragile window screens
For access, and then achieving it! our cabin’s
Interior heavy with the concussive
After-smell and taste of mouse—their exquisite
Piss and caraway turds—priming our languid
Appetites with mimosas from the hands
Of Mrs. Lowe herself—she squeezed the citrus,
Poured champagne into crystal flutes she ensured
Were frosted, all while munching modestly
On a wiener leftover from last night’s
Lowe’s family reunion, prudently
Conducted in Mr. Lowe’s three vacated
Automobile bays due to a sustained
And astounding mountain deluge, kids
Running around in the rain, vying to see
Who could get their t-shirts most wet,
Eight-year-old lads egging on
The twelve-year-old lassies—no wonder
We saw so many little Lowes!—
Washing down her scarlet frank
With an orange soda of yet another
Amazing hue, wild as a bird
Or a red-haired woman, which
Sustained her interest in a filtertip
Cigarette—a Marlboro, named for a London
Street named after an early Churchill—
Remarkable so many young nubile women
Had thronged to Randolph to brave
The morning sun with goose and other
Bumps, nipples like thimbles, wearing a virtual
Kaleidoscope of tiny bikinis so perilously
Close to stinging or grossly furred
And clawed assailants whose home
Was the encroaching White Mountain—
Ouch, ouch! And whack!—those thongs belonged
In Rio, but maybe the women were mule deer,
Or the white-tailed hinds adored by Jupiter
And companions to Diana, goddess of virgins
And the yearning moon—it was full,
And nominally blue, two shining this July—
Slipping from between the highland village’s
Pine and fir, up from poplar and silver birch
Below, or out from behind Mr. Lowe’s
Crayola ochre school bus parked athwart
The old highway west which crossed
Lowe family lands and the asphalt-gravel plains
Surrounding his garage, not to frustrate
Vacation home owners who summer-hiked
And winter snowshoed down the road,
Sometimes too snooty to shop at his store,
Lock elbows with a ship’s knees, leap
On board and Support Our Troops!
But to protect the reckless children
Of Randolph’s soaked, smouldering
Bacchante at Lowe’s midsummer night’s
Dance around the gas pumps—O flying, crimson horse,
Sustain me!—held despite the thud of last night’s
Cloudburst—so out came tender-hided Cervidae
Mulieris to test their reflections in the waters
Of Lowe’s cabins and pond-pool in a full
Spectrum oil mirage amid swaying palms
Mr. Lowe had shrewdly imported and planted
In sand renewed annually by caravans
Of trucks to Randolph, though first from islands
Scattered across Caribbeans seas on ships
That flew, with no apologies, the Jolly Roger!
