Isabella Stewart Gardner on her Knees

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

We tire of life, its many tricky lures,

And try to leave them for some howling hounds

To follow.  Lures like these are not the cures

We need.  Instead a memory rebounds

To violets we once encountered, now

Long gone, in Copley Square in nuanced thought

About the old church there.  We give a bow

To Isabella and her paintings fraught

With riches.  She becomes a wraith bouquet

Of violets with hardly any smell,

Too like an old, old church, a gray

Excuse for faith where old religions dwell.

  A Boston winter evening comes to mind

    That waits to be regained since left behind.