Ephesus
I would prefer to be a statue
dug up a thousand years from now.
I would look better. Instead of a
scatter of tibia and femur
or a tatter of finery,
a stone head, full lips,
a curl escaping a band,
or a torso with sinewy upper arm,
an aristocratic hand.
Better still, an entire city sprawled
out down to the harbor bordered
by the rock piles of wealthy homes
in which on erotic fresco fragments
men and women cavort -
erotic frescos that the government
cordons off because of embarrassment.
Oh, to embarrass a government
a thousand years from now -
languidly sprawled down an embankment
my ruins lolling into white-blue bays
stroked by Mediterranean waves.
– joyce nower
This poem first appeared in Taproot.