My mother sketches a nude for Marlene & Jack

Colin and his old lady strip naked
(he laughs under his breath, she whispers),
light up a joint to ease their excitement,
tangle themselves on an old chaise.

My mother arranges her pastels on the pallet
to her left, clenches a charcoal pencil between
her teeth, and pins her hair on top her head
while Colin and his old lady try not to fuck.

She sets her easel and pulls a quick drag
and, while Colin and his old lady still
try not to do it, warms her oils on the bodies
in her head: muscular hands … curved bellies ….

My mother has drawn a thousand naked
Christs as though His pain were sexy,
but flinches at these two, stoned and giggling.
Colin trying hard to remain still. To relax.

Mother had invited Jack & Marlene to voyeur
from the barn door shadows her mastery
at scrubbing crayon lines into thin fleshy shapes
and not the swelling between Colin and his old lady.

These moments she forgets herself, has forgotten
Colin and his old lady in their own act of creation,
succumbing to the tension of their stillness,
moving the way naked lovers and artists move.