A Plaster Cast

A recent trip took us to London where we found a cache at the plaster cast of David in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The unique thing about it was its request to write a log that rhymes. It used to be mandatory but those days are over.

I thought about it for awhile. Most of my poetry was snuffed out while learning the law. People like Martín Espada show that it doesn’t have to be that way, but on the other hand I long believed that Gerry Spence was a better lawyer than poet. Still, I decided to plunge in, keeping in mind that the cache wanted not just a poem, but something that rhymes. I have not written something that rhymes since grade school.

But here it is:

I walked through a hall of where statues gleam
They don’t move but still might dream
There he was — white as chalk not carved but cast
A shadow echo from the past
It didn’t move but take your heed
The plaster’s not fake, it just doesn’t bleed

The gaze was more than gaze alone
It cleaved through the hall, into bone
A hero’s pose in a stranger’s land
With no Goliath there to stand
There was more here than a simple deed
The plaster’s not fake, it just doesn’t bleed

Tourists came to mark the day
Without wondering what David might say
The treasures are not in things to find
It’s standing here if you’re not blind
And the truth’s not a prize, it’s a need
The plaster’s not fake, it just doesn’t bleed

Okay, be kind. It’s for a cache log and not the something like the Tocaloma Journal. Have I said it is for a rhyming cache log? The one thing that ameliorates it is that the cache encourages people to write more than initials and the museum was far more fun than anticipated.

An old mechanical tiger eating someone — really!