Idol

I am afraid of the idol in showcase three
and want to walk quickly away, but can't;
the little fellow compels our stare-
my hair stands up, I'm rooted in place.

You have seen nothing so broad
as its smooth, pale, semi-recurvant face
stretching itself dreamily east-to-west,
eyeless, like the moon in space.

Crooked at the elbows and knees
threatening an attack from the back
as if taught by a boomerang:
shiny-pale, as if fashioned in the days

when whales slid between the Cyclades
grazing the Mittelmeer floor with
cetacean aplomb-gobbling little fishes,
breaching, showing their tempting backs

to the hunters, our ancestors, the troglodytes
who plied the waves in those
whateveryoucall'em-little canoes,
and, captured, yielded their teeth; or

maybe some sculptor blocked you in marble,
if marble you be, hazy in moonlight, and said,

poem by Morgan Michaels
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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