Shroud of London:

Draped, lain in silence
The shrouded girl-pale
Figure-an angel
Locked inside-the
People walked by and stared
At her slender arms
Fallen down at her side.
Shrouded, entombed 
In an unmoving cascade of marble
She lay
She could sense them there
All the people who stared
And tears flowed neath her veil
Turned to ice by the cold
So cold-no movement there.
She wanted to look at the sky
Instead of the cold vaulted ceiling
No splendor of it could match
The warmth of their eyes
And she cried when they touched her
She wanted to tell them she could feel-
But locked inside-she couldn't move.
All day she cried-and the tears
Turned to snow
And she wondered why
The people were so free
As she couldn't be.
An unmoving face-couldn't 
Laugh or smile, but only the
Tears, stigmata trailed
By the cold marbled eyes.
Where was her angel?
They had carved her here
Out of formless stone
Why did she take form
To be beautiful, and alone.

The days went by-and people
Still gazed at the Shroud of London
So gracefully draped.
No one could save her-they
Saw her, but didn't know she was alive
Like snow they drifted-and
She was cold-and still didn't know why.
And the rain poured outside
And the sun showed its smile
And the snow piled in hills
And the leaves turned to gold.
Eroded by tears and made brittle
By cold-she longed for an ocean
Or the warmth of a soul
Who knew she was alive-not
A dead shell of marble
So she thought long and hard
And she started to burn
And she crumbled to dust
And the wind took its turn
And all that they saw-
In the morning's pale light
Was a teardrop of snow
And a carving of ice.

-Kimberly N. Hunt
Oct. 19, 1998


(c)1998