Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine #6

Clara after the painting by Thomas Eakins Her head tilts right. Two muscles hold her neck and head in a taut “C.” Her hair falls loosely into the curve, but not too much for Quaker sensibility.

One eye is young, one old with its darkened droop.

Perhaps that’s just the artist’s play of light.

Or, maybe he knows something, the way the lips close into a frown-smile so naturally, the way they are full of youth, but chapped.

The neck and shoulders form her marble podium.

He has drawn her eyes to a spot on his wall, though she seems to be looking somewhere further.

The eyes have left for another world― hoped-for once, but maybe now forever lost.

J Stephen Rhodes