Seven summers ago, she sat beneath
A bright window sill, sketching Rodin’s hands.
She leaned against the white wooden base
Beneath the glass, eyes tilted to the pad
Resting on her lap, three feet from marble
Hands crossed on a marble base perched
On a wooden stool. Four candles are lit
To her left, four to her right as a crowd
Of younger girls bends; hatted ladies crouch
To take her photograph as she draws
Rodin’s hands, her left hand brushing pencil
Against pad, held in her lap at Musée
Rodin, Hôtel Biron. In the photograph,
Two tall, marble hands lift and curl entwined.
The shadowed right thumb touches just against
The left hand; the hands arch to form a nave
Of space. These tall, slender hands form a vault.
My daughter’s eyes barely lift from the sketch pad.
We saw The Kiss, marble lovers, embracing,
But missed his Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
Its curling arms, hands, thighs—bending bodies,
Ianthe and Iphis, cast untransformed—
Models for crossovers in Hemingway’s draft,
Crossed out by hand—an unfinished Eden.
This summer, if we walk to rue Varenne,
In a pilgrimage from six rue Férou,
Near the Jardin de Luxembourg playground,
Perhaps she’ll sketch his cathedral, again.