Colossus
Cloth unfurling, curling with legs bent, striding forward,
She holds her beacon tall.
The patina of age is now familiar
Yet once she would have shone.
Symbol of freedom; of hope; of the last and only chance—
Merely thin copper draped over a metal skeleton.
Yet she stands, looking to the east toward those nations which held their people in the thrall of kings.
A challenge?
If unpinned from her high pedestal would she leave, saddened at the democracy of wealth; the home of the poor and the too rich?