Serena: Red Girl

// Bruce Robinson

There is a red girl, rudimentary.
The air in her bungalow
high in the burnished hills
in the sere morning is spooled henna.

Does she have a tennis court
absent of refraction,
and are there fruit trees
rioting with similes?

Does she have a carnival
of ambergris and bougainvillea?

In the care after evening
she may rust into gold,
what’s this but bitter music
become a voice at last

at sunset, if at that moment she
is serein, she is rubicund, a dark
red residence like the sea.