Statues

Most of us will never get to stand –
white and blinding – in the public square
telling the time with our shadows
or look down on the world from the top
of the dizzying column of our wealth
or on winter evenings with our Caesar gaze
make closed museums of our parks.

Most of us will be caught wild mid-dance
when the music stops trying not to topple over
or like the man I read about today
crouched all night like a frozen jackrabbit
in the raided fields who leaves nothing behind
except the shape of his own vanishing
into which the morning pours its hardening light.