PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Why do I excavate through this debris;
or hurt my back to shift some of this rubble;
or crawl to gather fragments carefully;
or squint at marks?  Why go to all this trouble?

Because this young girl's name is poetry,
worth more than footnotes in a monograph;
worth more than scholars' archeology.

Although I have no way to make her laugh,
I can, perhaps, find out what made her smile---
her adolescent joys were hers a while:

no sandals here (she must have disliked shoes);
some lover's poem (she must have been his Muse,
inspiring every syllable he put
before her when she came to him . . . barefoot).

Or so it seems to my imagination,
when I have had enough of conversation.  

And then . . . to know that she was martyred in
the frenzy that issued from Nero's rages;

and yet, she was a Christian, born again---
therefore, her spirit lives beyond the ages . . .
 
Starward
 
[jlc]