OF LIMESTONE
for Shell
In the palm of your hand
among the spear throwers
and beads and pendants
I spotted her.
Sculpture in the round, you proclaimed.
Venus of Willendorf, I said.
With your sculptor chisel you carved
her bone, wood and stone
while she danced her bulbous oval shapes
evading the searching blade.
A spear of light set a high relief from an angle
and I saw her.
Burin scars shadowed her face.
Your eye cast on her, on me with fury
shaped, sanded, filed, polished
her rhythmic arrangement of bulbous oval shapes
while she danced her Paleolithic steps
in a mammoth rib cave.
She is made of marble
every sculptor’s dream, you said.
I’m of limestone, I proclaimed.
Cannot be polished.
