Aphrodite's Beauty

She's actually quite plain. It's artifice
that makes the goddess; she must sit for hours
inside a maze of mirrors, take long showers
that seethe her skin smooth. Special dentifrice

so her teeth gleam like stars. Slowly she plucks
her eyebrows, pastes sequins in their place.
A hundred brushes help create that face
-you really did not think it was just luck.

Spiders and silkworms stitch around her sheer
shimmering gowns, moonlight through waterfall.
Filigree shoes whose tick-tock heels are all
you know at first when she is almost here.

She overwhelms by art. Simple and plain
the gifts love forces on us – joy and pain.