An Aging Model from Paris

[BobBradshaw]

An Aging Model from Paris

   I wheel her down to the pond.
   She looks as if she’s smoked fags
   since the turn of the 20th century.

   70 year ago she modeled naked.
   She recalls the first time
   she modeled nude, in Paris,

   wanting to drop her robe
   as if she were a geisha
   slipping out of her kimono.

   Instead her robe fell to the floor
   as if she was there
   for an annual physical,

   the air frigid.
   One achingly lovely young man
   stared at her breasts,  

   longing to leave his hand prints
   on them.  That's when she focused
   on the building across the street.

   At the window was a man
   holding binoculars!
   She squirmed.

   "Don't move," she was scolded
   by her instructor.  Then
   in a softer voice, “Don’t worry.

   Here it's art for art's sake. "
   Quietly he asked, “Are you doing
   anything after class?"

   The koi in the pond
   have turned and drifted away
   like art students leaving a gallery.
   
   I ask, Do you remember the best
   of your portraits, you know the one...
   at the center of NYU's art school wall?

   Some nights, she confesses,
   she gazes at it
   like an adoring critic.

   Would she be hurt
   to know students pass it by  
   without a glance,

   the way visitors
   strolling these banks
   ignore another old woman,

   her hands spotted
   like rose leaves
   with black
   mold?

[Billy]

I like the way the narrative wanders and reveals so much about the model and about N.

[BobBradshaw]

Thank you, Billy…. It’s good to know the meandering flow works.