Mona Lisa
I was first in line to gaze at you in a crowd,
and then I read your life story and gazed at you anew,
and finally saw you as a real woman,
yet not of this world.
It isn’t that strange really,
you married at 15 to an older cloth merchant,
and gave birth to six children (two you lost),
yet those are details.
Your face, your eyes
hold a clairvoyant ether,
like a moon expelling her dharma.
That mysterious smile,
a biologic drift seeking interpretation
from a haze that doesn’t obscure the view,
but makes it palpable.
You are an opera without music,
that holds a stain of smiles centuries old.
Would champagne spill from your fragrant mouth?
Articulation and pleasure to follow?
Or are you modeled on the cadavers of Davinci
A yawp of slender neck and jowl
as he systematically carved every curve of you perfectly?
Caught in an unchanging instant.
a silhouette sex,
a woman from the center of the universe
who just wants to left alone.
I see you holding wings in your smile
your surface a shy demurring;
thoughts dividing underneath
that try to hide themselves
but glow in private.
A mystery even to yourself.
I see plentitude and patience,
and a fierce conundrum of the soul
in the tempest that was Florence
of wars, and more wars
and lingering animosity
that doesn’t touch you.
You, an intricate ambiguity,
as life roils on
around your feet.
Finally I see you
reinvent yourself with flair,
hear your cadence as a prayer.
A slow fade,
a breathing wind
of gateless air.
The custody of knowing
you are never going anywhere,
not in this life,
or on the other side.
RM July 2019