A man reaches out to touch, flesh to stone,
a Michelangelo statue.
It is not the famous Carraran David,
towering above tourists, aloof,
polished giant toward which
their cameras, guidebooks, fingers point.
The man is no paparazzo.
He holds no camera, has left his guidebook
on a bench somewhere down the hall.
Perhaps someone will take it, or
he’ll forget it. No matter.
It tells him nothing of the sculptor’s
need, or his, for contact with another;
of how, once caught,
he couldn’t let go, by finishing free
his half-formed brother,
however cold or captive he might be—
perhaps because, cold and captive and half-formed,
he needed a hand still
upon his chisel-scarred flank.
The man reaches out, although
someone is doubtless watching
to see that such things don’t happen.
As the figure struggles
in his marble prison, so the man
struggles against the crowd,
his fear of seeming foolish,
his reticence, forgetting
how many lire equal bed and breakfast,
how far he’s come to stroke a stone.
a shoulder upon which
Michelangelo once rested,
this man, too, just now, stands caught,
half in, half out of bondage.