(4)

Minerva

Oh, Minerva, my pedestaled maiden, Why I have given you
such a name I don’t know,
after all these years in each other’s company,
it just came to me now, at this moment due, maybe,
to the Italian marble from which you’ve been sculpted.
A Roman goddess noted for wisdom,
a source of inventive power,
would not be my first guess, noting, as I have,
your young, elegant features, your beautiful face
turned demurely,
slightly downward and to the side, as if not wanting
to appear too inquisitive but still listening.
Is this your muted message, then, my dear and ageless
Minerva, listening, the way of wisdom?
My hands have touched your face many times,
keeping dust-free your coiffed hair and small,
delicate ears.
I didn’t know until now that my care, my touch,
was to help me hear you the more,
to be still to know.

 

Endnote: In my new home I found there was no safe place for the marble bust of the young woman and decided, therefore to give the bust up for consigment at our local resale store, Vintage LaConner. It wasn’t until I had parted with the statue that I realized my emotional attachment to it. As crazy as it sounds I was saddened by the loss and so decided to spell it out in the form of a poem. The bust, incidently, was given to me by an elderly woman, when I was pastor at the Congregational Church in Alexandria, MN in 1958. She asked that I come to her apartment over the hardware store after dark so the neighbors wojuldn’t see me carrying the statue away.

< Previous Poem	Next Poem >