Visiting Aphrodite*

The soul is not smoke that floats
and vanishes forever. It is a bridal veil
the whiteness swirling around our heads,
kissing the whitest arches between memories
when we, old now, go to visit Aphrodite.

The ancient artist's hands caressed
marble into her epiphany. Only love
can do that, and his love was returned,
for she has made him an Adonis
immortal in his still inhabited work.

This luminescent gateway, a living
fragment of the whole, beacons
initiates to walk through,
body and soul reawakened
by her overarching mystery.




*Seeing the Bartlett head of Aphrodite at the Getty