Yet Another Venus

 I wonder how they found you.

You could have faded into a garden

or shattered in a war.

You stand above me sighing like a white lily under a gentle glow of museum lights, surrounded by other still flowers in time.

You look as though you have just stepped out of a bath to survey the water you’ve left smelling like roses.

Even your arms have been poetically broken.

I can imagine you once commanding them with such sensual ease,

a gesture that could quake an army of men.

Perhaps you only beckoned to one.

He would have been a man who interested you, perhaps a man who resisted your wine kisses and bewildered you.

Perhaps, in a cold, flushed rage you sealed his end in shame.

Yet, I’d like to believe that he softened your marble heart.

Or perhaps your lost gesture

was simply to let the bath water drain.