Produced by Dennis Camire

This week’s poem is by Maine Poet Laureate Stuart Kestenbaum of Deere Isle.

 

Listening to Stones

Venus de Milo at the Louvre for Bruce Bulger

By Stuart Kestenbaum

 

At first there are so many

people crowded around her

 

with cameras, smartphones and iPads

that it looks like a press conference,

 

only Venus isn’t taking any questions

from the reporters today, she is risen

 

above us, and the tourists

below ebb and flow all day

 

like the ocean around the island

of Milo, where she used to live, where

 

stones must have life inside them

to make the gestures so human that

 

even the eyes are watching us.

She isn’t timeless for you can see

 

the passage of centuries in the pockmarks

on her armless torso and her face yet

 

she survives as we all survive — humans,

gods or stones — in the immutable light,

 

how still she stays through the busy day

and the silent, cool, star-filled night

 

Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu