Lavinia's Morning
Poems by John Pilkey
Antonio Canova. Venus Italica (1811)
Lavinia waits behind a massive door
to make her debut in the summer sun
and plants soft soles against a chamber floor
in training how she ought to rise and run
across a lawn that welcomes everyone
to witness what she is preparing for.
She leans a while above a lamp-lit desk
and traces her estate across a chart
by index tip without a man to ask
how lawns belong to some forgotten art
of bursting beauty from a place apart
to preordained performance of her task.
Dull attendants have abandoned her
to twilight and the shadows' lengthening grip
to whisper to herself what servants stir
no longer needed for a silent step
once the door discloses hair and hip
and heels become what whispers were.
I am her paramour the solar blast
of daylight warmth when I decide
to end the hours of darkness that will last
as long as mortal sleepers dream and hide
perfection within chambers of blank pride
imprisoned in abysses of the past.
She knows me as the yellow star that rises
above trimmed hedges and the deeds
of men; and if she welcomes the surprises
my nocturnal disclosure spreads,
she'll conquer all the places where she treads
By converting rays to exercises.
