F. Daniel Rzicznek
Statue Awake for Seven Seconds
If I could choose to speak
I might direct the clouds
to fan out, strike whitely
behind the garden’s high hedge
where the little sun is a coin
for some hog-faced child
to pocket: engraved columns,
the wind-riffle strands
of the profile’s hair go
suddenly dark. It is suddenly
darker. I’m rapt in the raw gold
of wine and hill, and the sweep
and stir of women tracing
across the noon, how their figures
ghosting beneath the loom of trees
melt to deftly genderless,
fogged-in shapes of blue or red
then outlines, then only lines.