Modigliani’s Servant Girl

Feel

the heavy blackened material,

midnight ache of a

          Mediterranean world--

Follow

the arrowed chin

to fragile collar to

          cornered feet, solid--

still, your body tips, stacked V’s,

limbs tugging you downward.

I kneel before your angled stance,

the fulcrum of your skirt points

to where your hands, working to

calm themselves, produce modest cover.

My thoughts climb up the gentle curve

of your long neck, hang there.  Do I

dare push the loose strands of

hair back behind your ears?

Your face is too small to rest upon; your azure

eyes, masked, force my own back to brown.

O poor servant girl, the imperfect

flourish of the painter’s brush on you

respects the vulnerability of Victorian

beauty, but is there an unspoken blush (a kiss

of red upon on your cheeks)?  Perhaps

what Modigliani is saying is simple--

around this painting, behind the drawn

blue-grey shades, through the blank windows

is where I wait and watch, a real person. 

Cemetery

I walk the cemetery in the afternoon, sun

reflects off stone, woodpeckers, hawks,

intent on drowning out each other’s song.

I’m tired of wandering alone; I’ve made you

so many offers. You insist on staying silent, but

once we set ourselves on fire, unquiet.   

Now it’s up to me to decipher what’s left.

I lift a line of grief from a stranger’s sadness,

wait for the bells to stop, sift through

the ashes for more marble stories.

I walk the cemetery to the far end, startled

by the world glaring through the iron gate.

All I know is it was better the times   

you drove, no eyes looking back.