Blank Verse over the Dark River
Lines composed on the BU Bridge in late summer

The city rises above the river,
glittering jewels in the sky, raised by hands
dirtied and worn, rounded and warm, all part
of a living organism so vast,
so interdependent it spreads like a
web over the deeper, older chassis
of the Earth itself, crowding out the life
that came before. But with vegetable
intelligence, weeds rise from cracks,
geese nest on the river under bridges,
algae sprouts in the depths, and water-plants,
and irises, and cockroaches, and rats,
a plethora of life, still adapting
with the same inexorable prowess
that drove the ivy through the windowpane,
that drove baby through the birth canal,
that drove the farmers to create the corn
rattling from the silos and into trains
that pass over the bridge, into the heart
of the city that rises above it.

Frances Donovan
August 11, 2007
September 3, 2007

The Arab from Tunis

Naked but for a headscarf
that might be a kuffiyah but draped flat,
not wrapped and tied—one adorned hoop
as large as your fist, one band of gold
four fingers thick around your upper arm,
and the bangles, thick and complicated
about your ankles.

You turn from the camera, column of your spine
in a half-twist, ambiguous, a vase and a long panel of mosiac
witness to the smooth expanse of your
back, buttocks, legs, flawlessly smooth
and half in shadow.
                              Light catches the side of your body:
ankle, shin, thigh, the jut of the pelvis—the word is flank, like a horse:
the architecture of your skeleton so beautifully obscured
and yet present, present like the pear shape of your breast
profiled in sharp relief against the darker wall,
the cradle of your arms against the rough stone,
cradling just half your face: the hooked nose,
your hooded eye fixed someplace between me and you,
and your mouth, the enigmatic mouth.

It's not seduction in your mouth,
not an enigmatic smile, but almost a pout,
almost a smoldering of outrage.
Is it anger in those eyes, at the man with the camera,
perpetrator of this transgression against the Prophet?
Did he ask you, wheedle you, make love to you?
Or was it an order? Did he buy you in the marketplace,
with the vase and bangles?

Do you scoff at the way he draped the cloth
over your hair? With your hair hid,
does the cloth of nudity protect you
from the wrath of Allah? From your father's wrath?
Or is he behind the shutter's eye?
Are you Muslim at all, or do you follow an older path?
Are you my sister, captured here forever,
crossing all this distance, crossing the miles, the years,
one whole century, an ocean, and a people?
This only I know,
this, sister.
My sister.

Frances Donovan
September 3, 2007

The First Date, The Last Date, The Only Date
(After Algiers)

Tom, what I miss most about you is the way
you pressed the flat of your palm against my chest,
curling it open from underneath,
heel of the hand between the swell of my breasts,
fingertips grazing the collarbone.

When we kissed each other it looked as though you were in pain—-
but I knew the clench of your brows for what it was: rapture.

I took my pleasure from you by the evening's end,
and did not offer the release that women have been trained to.
I thought that there would be a next time,
when I would see your face at that moment
as you saw mine.

Was it good for you? I asked,
half-joking, resting against your upraised leg.
But your reply was not a joke:
not the word you spoke or the way you spoke it,
jaws, lips clenched around it,
unable to contain, forceful, economical, always.

Did I scare you off or were you scared to begin with?
It doesn’t matter. The ache
for you has lessened with the weeks.
Your face is fading, the feel of your hands,
the transformation of your face without your glasses,
your mushy kisses,
my laughter in the restaurant with its octagon of light,
the curve of your pectorals
beneath your black polo shirt,
the way you sat on the steps of Algiers
in the Square as I approached,
your hand on the check—-all of it is fading and will fade,
all but the viscous moment
when you pushed my heart away with your palm
and made me ache for more.

Frances Donovan
May 2007

What is it you contemplate,
Maiden Mother of the infant God?
Breastless, red-draped, half-paused
at the door between this world and the next?
The angel's face in rapture as you finger
the strands of wheat, the grapes of wine,
the baby, fat and solid, holding up a tiny hand
in benediction. Whose world?
Neither. Both.
You are the doorway between.

Frances Donovan
April 2005, January 2007
Note: This poem was inspired by Botticelli's Virgin and Child with an Angel, which sits at the end of the long gallery on the third floor of the Gardner Museum in Boston. It's a painting of special significance to me; it reminds me of transitions, innocence, experience, and the time I scared off the docent with my Goddess-centered interpretation of the painting.