Snared

Snared

That little nymph statue laced with web

holds indented prints of the sculptor’s thumbs

when he formed her flesh and curved her thighs

and smoothed her breasts with strength and love

and tenderness to place her proud at the

Governor's wharf. And now in shoulder curve

and tilt of head a spider drapes a lucky web.

A board decision cast a cement plinth

to fix this lithe ephemeral nymph

who watches unblinking those cruises arrive

they come and they leave in the bay of her eye

now filled with us and our fiddly lives

being shunted along through gardens and lawns

vacuumed, filleted, stamped and endorsed

by imprimatur of reign and rule

our route defined by steam cleaned walls

and paths and if you wander beyond

you'd be flung like a sinner into

the water or flogged like a felon,

a sculptor perhaps, on that old triangle

of truth and justice and clemency

this our U3A convener warns

mischievously on this smiling morn

where the warmth of the sun albeit strong

on those lissom limbs can raise but motes

and memory of sculpted nymph
 and sculptor

his firm and loving thumbs forming her into

perpetual life both model and sculptor

conjoined each day in viewers' eyes

like ours where art will jostle with fiddly lives

and we, replete with our sunhats, cameras

concerns and knee-jerk 'NO', just cannot affirm

this moment thumping with Life and YES

before it passes and the nymph oh the nymph

she understands well and would comfort

with welcome limbs and whispers

but snared she is by silk of spider and

muted tongue, and snared by atrophy

of circumstance and cautionary twirl

of his final thumbprint with its solemn

imprint forbidding her flesh and will

to move as it would but to cast instead

caution as currency into her form.

Yes, oh yes she would whisper softly

into his ear... as she did.

Adapted from a prose poem by Neva Kastelic.
The beautiful statue is at the head of the Governor General's landing in Yarralumla, Canberra.