Where men mine
curled before wall
called a face
landscape is memory
- woman and child -
and light's an embrace.

At Moore's stroke
stone became skin;
elm-veins blushed
round shoulders, bronze broke
sweat, as lambs petaled
to daisies for Lawrence.

Their motifs
are Animate
mineral;
intimate Space, and the
defining veil
that trans-substantiates.

Travertine
facile with rose
is just rhyme
while the serpentine arch
- long rubbed, limblike -
is meter. Dig deeper:

Find wonderstone's
pewter moonlight;
know salts from
your pores are stalactite's
stars, and carve holes
like those of cave-father

coal-cadenced
to Shakespeare. Break-
through never
needed plumed serpents nor
chac-mools. Pit's clay
admits air is heaven.

and the high
price of weather's
told at tea
there, where you learned it: Worlds
sit on table-
tops, and we fit the sky.

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Copyright 2001, 2005 Katherine Anne Harris. All Rights Reserved.