Whence Lenore

Where are you, my Lenore?

Where are you, my Lenore?
Black of hair and lips like chloroform.
Your eyes my mind's maze Minotaur.
In every beauty, I see your form.

What will it take to find you?
I've sought you in the golden sun.
I've sought you in depraved places of blue.
In another woman's arms and a fishnet stockings' run.

Lenore, I have dreamt of you all my life.
It was Athens, Macedonia, or Rome.
I see your hair, your smile, my wife.
I have smelled your fertile loam.

I have tasted a part of you one time.
A dark-haired vixen who would be Lenore.
She was nearly perfect, nearly mine.
But not quite, not quite my Lenore.

My life is forfeit in your search, Lenore.
I will give up all just to find you.
Even though I know you may not exist, Lenore.
Yet vainly will I seek you.