I like when poems write themselves,
or when Michelangelo does it for you.
That winter, for instance, in Florence
when the city was covered in snow
and some Medici or other
commissioned the artist to sculpt
a snowman for the courtyard.
Not three spheres and a carrot, this,
but something Greco-Roman:
moulded shoulders and thighs,
six-pack and a thoughtful jawline
above the little tufted geometry of cock.
It was, by all reports, as beautiful as you
can imagine, which is probably more
beautiful than it actually was,
which is the point of the poem
he shaped: yearning for yearning,
loss as achievement, learning
to spend all winter looking
forward to the first glimpse of green
when the weeds poke through the cobbles
in the courtyard, watered by the puddles
where the statue once stood.
!! little tufted geometry!
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