I didn’t need the painting to remember
the Westfield River coiling below
steep walls, the sun burning my upturned
face clear of features, my awkward arm
and bent leg trying to appear relaxed
on the rock for Deborah practicing
her figure painting. Naked, I wanted
to be useful to her in the color fields
of July and August—where I ached
to shed my shame with my clothes,
to trade my barely acceptable
twenty-four-year-old body for one
I could admire as I admired hers.
Still, when she sent me a PDF of the fifty-
year-old painting—dark hemlocks and pines
hemming the water—I remembered walking
downhill with my flashlight, a dumb city
girl spooked on dirt roads by weird sounds.
I tried to be brave, each day at my desk,
tried to find language for my lesbian desire
on drives up light-drenched Route 9
with Deb through Hadley and Williamsburg.
When I look at the painting now
I wish I had found some tenderness
then for the person lying on the rock—
ardent, earnest with her imperfect
young breasts and belly.
I wish I’d found her comely against
the silver-blue river, rising with her
doubts and fears on reliable legs
all summer to leap from rock to shore.
This is drawn from “Midsummer Count: New and Selected Poems.”
