after John Singleton Copley
From the leather bench, legs swinging
a foot from the floor, she brings her gaze
to the shark: its hideous teeth, its misplaced
lips and mistaken shapes, the sinister
way its mass slips beneath the surface
to surface again as a scythe-shaped fin.
I follow strokes of light converging
on the crew, every body strained to save the naked boy
but one, his face hauntingly matter-of-fact,
the pact a sailor makes with the sea
a tacit acceptance of death in all
its disgraceful forms. If she sees
what I’m seeing, she’s not saying.
Now she paces, takes in details to piece
together, then climbs back onto the bench
and clambers off again. She stops and stares:
bloodied leg, sailors’ hands outstretched, Watson
reaching out toward something past the boat,
past clippers, slave ships, masts like crosses
and holy towers on shore, past
the horizon and its amassing
clouds, where waves vanish in the rising sun
the shark has come from and will return to
after playing with the man who’s falling
asleep in the water. “Isn’t it silly?”
she asks as she turns away from the canvas
and smiles up at a man who’s stopped
to look and listen to headphones explaining
Copley’s shift from portraits to works
of historical ambition, myth made
from the everyday, and she tells him
the boo-boo’s not so bad, they’ll get him
in the boat and take good care of his leg.
The stranger nods—not quite sure, I’m sure,
of what’s taking place but maybe
grateful everything will be okay—
and walks away as my daughter settles
on the bench and waits: for the painting
to change, for the sun to rise, for me
to take her hand and let her lead me on.