I sat down to write an awful poem,

tried everything,

all the tricks, all the twists, all the turns,

 reached at last for "It was a dark and stormy..."

But

 I got tripped up by the rum,

Ginger beer, sun-white sands as outrageous

as your grin that time we outraced the hurricane

to port, lost off the Barbados coast,

knowing I could die, without you

I was alone, my glass no more comfort,

its rattling ice, skeleton keys on a ring, clanking

yet

as I watched grey and green storm clouds

begin to tower on the near horizon

and my poem fell

into an awful, dark silence as I drank