I imagine you in profile,
sitting in the artist’s chair.
Your coiffure, so elegant, yet
wind is blowing through your hair.
Did you feel self conscious
in the crown of Liberty you wore?
Those lips, moist, pink and parted,
That noble nose and chin,
You stare into eternity
as the artist then begins.

Teresa De Francisci
was the face of Liberty
from the roaring twenties’ boom
to the Depressions’ maladies .
Then she disappeared
and was minted just once more:
It was at the Denver Mint,
in the summer of Sixty four.


They coined your youthful face
when you, yourself, were old and gray.
Then politicians changed their minds,
and consigned them to the flames.
Did it break your husband’s heart
that his work met such an end?
what joy it would have been
to see you made young again.
Whatever was the cause,
your husband died that very year:
the year his lovely Liberty
had been set to reappear.