Robert Southwick Richmond

With Lady Luck in Las Vegas

WITH LADY LUCK IN LAS VEGAS

 

Whitesound was her song. As if tied to the mast

you heard the drums, the pulse slushing in your ears,

your mother\'s voice singing of Cinderella,

Lady Luck laughing on her polychrome throne.

 

In a magicbook you found the random numbers

pure as the day they\'d leaked from a resistor,

and there divined the formula of the world,

so marvelous your sense would not contain it.

 

To Vegas then you came, with a hunch, with a system,

Lady Luck loomed in the whir of the slots

where she wove the white digits she pulled over your eyes.

 

There was no wheel, no cards, no sense, no system,

but your head spun from the drinks. You crashed

on the random rocks outside the casino door.