(for Susan)

The fragrance of a clover no bigger
than the new white toes of babies
intoxicates this entire Anatolian valley.

Bees stumble, butterflies whirl, parrots dance!
Dionysius laughs from the stone shoulder
of satyrs wrapped in garlands of plums.

A marble mountain, crowned a million
summers’ white, smiles down on this city built
by a freed slave to his love of Love.

Two thousand years have flowered before
these smooth, carved blossoms
strewn about Aphrodite’s tumbled thighs—

Tousled heads and torsos,
lusty epics frozen against the blue sky,
stone poets reciting to hand-carved hills.

Pious muzzeins awaken us from our dalliances
to midday prayer. We pray: To the fragrance
of loved stone; To a slave’s memory of sweetness.

We are all slaves in the Temple where love
began at a clear spring near honey-soaked blossoms,
and breathes now from marbles of white sugar

Tumbled in an hourglass of clear tea
near a plate of olives and ripe tomatoes
set before you: my eternal Aphrodite.

© 2005 by James P. Lenfestey. All rights reserved.