Alabaster (The Statue)
I see the fineness
And sense divineness
From smoothest feet to marble brow
A curve of lip
A tilt of hip
As gentle as a tempest would allow
A stolen glance
A lover’s trance
Time holds the flowers in your hair
A shy unease
The world to please
Show upon your visage, pale and fair
Even in despair
Silent hope rests there
Your stilled heart longs to feel love’s fire
Through another age
Petal, leaf, and stage
You wear the ageless beauty we desire
Yearning
Lift me from the daily doldrums
From atmosphere so tense and terse
I float above the silver cloudlets
To a golden universe
See the rainbows in each raindrop
Long before they start to fall
Dancing prisms when the sun beams
Reflect into a glistening hall
The room, alight with song and laughter
Fills me, yet I shed a tear
The silken thread that lifts me, binds me
And I am still tethered here
So back down to the daily drabness
With atmosphere so dull and plain
Underneath the silver cloudlets
I look up through silver rain
Jennifer Morgan lives in Eastern Washington state where she proofreads by day
and is transfixed and transformed by writing and reading poetry at night.
These poems are among the entries for the Society of Classical Poets’ 2012 Poetry Competition.