Ars Longa
I
Why must art be
long, I ask?
Why not sizzle
up the task?
Largo, says the
rhapsodist,
snappy hands make
counterfeits.
II
Latefall light in
Florida--
intimate gold
camera.
Moistly dying
overtones
muscled up in
little bones.
III
Vita brevis,
this is why
heart lives in an
open eye,
swallowing in
hopeful bits
morsels of the
infinite.
—Sidney Wade
____
previously appeared in Celestial Bodies, LSU Press 2002