Interlude for the Shy One by Dennis Finnell
``What a story,'' an almost inaudible voice says.
She's the one whose torso is discolored
By the shade, whose gold face
Turns toward the two girls who still wonder.If you must, shy one, keep your back to us and in the shade,
Even though the shadows make your body
Stone-like, brooding, as though you were made
To bear flesh and blood alreadyPart statue or effigy. You're right sighing about the story.
None of us can directly report our creation,
Or sudden howling substantiality,
Nor even sometimes what we had yesterday for dinner.Maybe we were never born
But descended, baby ex machina through the clouds to the corn
And were discovered by mom and dad.But birth didn't stop there. Ask a piece of marble
Chiseled like a President. It stares
Over The Reflecting Pool at all the unfinished--Ask the man over there, using his own face
As a chisel into the black wall with names in it.Ask a piece of marble, itself unfinished, the afterlife
Of limestone, itself tiny skeletons strewn
On some sea floor, as after
A civil war, compacted
By all the days, the nights, an ocean.And what of you, shy one? Are you forever stuck
In a momentary Eden with no gray hairs
To show for it, and childhood hiding behind a combination lock
Beyond which there is nothing, save a palette and tears?Today we brought you our eyes.
Please accept them as tokens,
And don't be alarmed at our voices, for we may be
Your infancy and your old age.
...................... 
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