A View of Updike's Beauty from the Spine

A View of Updike’s "Beauty from the Spine" - for Josh


There is something here; the waiting
On the mouth, the tongue and the tooth
Of passive connection – holding back
And wishing for the fantasy, crying
For a day, any day, all of the days.
Across the room, the Caribbean beach in the picture frame
Turns from a picture into memory,
Hanging above his Roman head
Laureled gold and green and gray
As the clay his skin was formed from.
We have worshipped statues
In the dead of night, in the moon’s eye,
In the promise of no light.
You were the boy at recess
Who was not afraid to show skin
Or invite hips and fingers,
That sterling-silver priceless skin
And all the extra bits, the extremities
Coming together at the core of you
At your waist-twisting center.
Draped over a chaise nine miles wide
A still-frame, the image
You are the thing nobody can quite
Put their fingers on
In the long open halls of a gallery—
What is there to learn from the Three Studies
But a testament to the beauty in a body
In a soul?