HOLD FAST THIS BEAUTY
for Alma Childress Brown (1907-94)
Hold Fast This Beauty: little book of verse,
older than Eliot’s waste land, Pound’s usura,
gathering of poems elegant and terse,
my mother would have praised your keen caesura.
Five yellow tulips offered to the gods
your haiku reads: and you have seen the Moon
return a thousand times to your raised hands,
and danced the golden rhythms of Oshún.
Hold Fast This Beauty: flapper frontispiece,
young widow, teacher, now in your great age
reading among the children of your speech,
still beautiful upon the printed page.
The man who would his mother’s beauty praise
must ride the wild-haired giant all his days.