On rare Sundays when my preacher father
had nothing clerical to do, homiletics
gave way to aesthetics
and he took my sister and me
to the art museum in Youngstown, Ohio,
which, for all its imposing façade,
had only four small galleries,
one devoted entirely to ships.
My mother never came with us–
staying home with my sister Ruth
who was fidgety as a horsefly
flitting from one bare torso to the next.
But my father seemed comfortable—
except for nudes, which he hurried us past
as if they were the whores of Babylon,
and I quickly learned which pictures
I should ignore
until that Sunday
while I was studying a well-dressed landscape—
you know the kind, scarfed mountain, tiaraed cloud—
I saw a man and a woman with him too
standing in front of a naked girl,
her whole body spread on a sheet,
and the couple were discussing colors and proportions
as if this painting in the buff were just one more canvas
of an oak without leaves or a schooner without sails.
Lois Marie Harrod’s recent publications include her 18th poetry collection Spat (2021) and her winning chapbook Woman (Blue Lyra, 2020). Dodge poet, life-long educator and writer, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. More info and links to her online work www.loismarieharrod.org. Her The Bed the Size of a Small Country is forthcoming in the fall from Kelsay.
