Flowers like Leis Lying on an Altar

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

The sculpture of a god whose powers are not

Apparent waits for you to pray to him.

Can he protect a baby in a cot?

If so, what offering, or incense, hymn

Or bowing is required to bring his stone

(Or lurid plastic arms) to intervene

And save the infant?  Will a bribe or moan

~With fetching stockinged thigh presents a jewel

That hints at bed?  Perhaps a proffered pearl

Would make divinity a tad less cruel.

  Accretions of millennia might make

    A Hindu god more like young Christ than snake.

~ Phillip Whidden