Joan Crawford's Dilemma

A door is a port
to the world of another room.
Their hinges--ocean waves--
swing open
revealing a passageway to death.

In Humoresque, grim Joan Crawford,
her lips down-turned,
treaded into the sea
as the film's orchestra sang Wagner.
Nightgowned in lush starkness,
drunkenly, soberly, she strode toward
then stumbled into,
the space between gray swells
where maybe fatality awaited.
The sand-bottom stretched, now smooth,
now littered with jagged shells,
now whimsically tickly,
now piercing her feet again
with hurtful rock-shards.
The boom of the surf
gave way to the bass sounds
of the dark nadir.

Far below the surface:
barely a stir.
Even the seaweed resisted undulation.
Coral posed in puffs, pillowed
or frozen in still sediment.
This chamber was governed by stupor.
This place drew to itself a melancholy
so elaborate it illustrated
a novel decadence.
This port was where troubled ships
anchored, but somehow failed to land.