Lyla Crosses The Plaza Poem by James Walter Orr

I sit in The Plaza, surrounded by statues:
marble and granite: provocative poses,
hemmed in by the neatly trimmed hedges and bushes:
gardens of flowers commanded by roses.

You come in a whirl-wind, all bustling with action:
your retinue flutters like flags in the wind.
You are at the center: as calm as the sunshine,
a center of force that no god could rescind.

I note that each statue defines more each muscle
and ever so slightly assumes a rose hue.
Blood now is suffusing each marble complexion.
The wreath of each god is now slightly askew.

The sprites that oft ride on the wings of a whirlwind,
and whisper to ears that will willingly hear,
have never in all of our time yet recorded
such warm phrases murmured, of want, in one's ear.

The whimsical wind, like the flute of a siren,
has drawn me, entire, to this human divine.
Obsessed, on the spot, with this rose of creation:
this creature of such an exquisite design.

Each statue leans toward you in some supplication.
The bushes stretch branches in silent array,
while flowering shrubs seem to reach toward your body:
petals wide open in sensual display.

The whirlwind that dances is now dissipating,
while leaves on the bushes hang empty, alone.
Emotions disheveled, my dreams without answers,
each hope, every dream, from my future has flown.

The rose colored blush of each statue is fading;
Its posture relaxing, and slowly, my own:
the something that surges within them diminished;
emotions still flooding my body have grown.

The statues and I still bear something in common
with gardens of flowers that likewise would share
the joy of that sweet aberration of nature:
that mixture of rapture and total despair.

I reach out my hands, like the empty leaves hanging.
The plaza stands empty: a great arid waste.
A promise of some sort of future salvation
is poor compensation for that one brief taste.

Did you have a clue, when you passed from The Plaza,
the desolate landscape that you left behind?
How shriveled the hedges and flowers and statues;
and heart-broken poet that you left behind?