LAWRENCE'S DURRELL'S HOUR
February 27, 1912 birth

Petunia is all masked
for the evening ball
rushing from the library
to her Junior prom
dressed in a pink taffeta
puts on pearl earrings
and high heels in a moment
which she fixes
over a beige picket -fence
whispers as a coincidence
of a quick sidewalk push
Petunia suddenly reveals
to tell me
she has a  life long
literary crush
upon Lawrence Durrell
with his travel journals,
asked me what I think
of his aesthetic sense,
telling her I was not yet familiar
with his exemplary
but probably minor poet,
yet later secretly learn
of this diplomatically
serviced and wisely
dramatically wrought writer
who was immediately
spotted by his English critics
by his literary character studies
yet arbitrarily asking myself
what his poetic life taught
for him to crave in literature
for more cultural advance,
Petunia laughed out loud
at my evasive journalist answers
about love ,jealousy and romance
in this petulant chance encounter
at this one forgotten event
on the curb
with a  nervous question
to her in the sunset
if she could accompany me
to the dance
as a pageant tour
of high school movers,
and tournament of cheerleaders
waves to us in a limousine,
later in a quest of a Eurasian life
I will welcome Durrell's diet
of travel and diary
as this continual night owl friend
climbed with me on divine heights
over explicit sex scenes
howling at the hectoring lovers
under his laurel covers
of "The Alexandria Quartet",
that desire all the company
at the Copts' society set
with their family quarrels
out of Cairo with,Egyptians
attired at his text,
by uncovering a manic betrayal
in the pride of complex novels
by which students freely
make out his dramatic destiny
out of an episodic history
as of sexting fragrant dreams
when he was a guilty libertine
brilliantly enlightening "Justine"
Lawrence  Durrell still riding
over the Ionian sea
wondering of Jason's fleece
and onto the classic language
of his discovered Hellenic revival
as he sails on
as an Athenian to Greece.