Of all the time I've wasted my favorite has to be the hours
I've spent drawing Donatello's David in the Bargello,
once the Medici prison in Florence, now the sculpture gallery
and I'm not talking about the marble David
with all his clothes on but the naked bronze pretty boy
wearing only boots and a wide-brimmed hat
with a garland of flowers on the brim; yes, it's with him
I'm filling notebooks—heads, torsos, full-body drawings,
quick sketches, from every angle. Hey, girls, sketching
is a great way to pick up guys, a useless bit
of knowledge since I have a handsome husband I'm gaga about,
but it might be of some help to you, my sisters,
because I was drawing David one day when Ron from the UK
showed me his sketches, David, of course,
and a great one he'd done on a bus in Rome, and his line
was a little heavier than mine, but the drawings
had lots of verve or sprezzatura, as the Italians would say,
and then there was bespeckled Malcolm
from New York who just kept edging up, so I showed him
my David, which Penelope, my drawing teacher,
told me to do. “People are going to look, so just get used to it.”
I have notebooks filled with drawings
of the Alhambra, Japanese pagodas, Italian piazzas, Alabama
cross gardens and for what? I'm no good
with landscapes and not much better with faces,
but I always start with the eyebrows—bushy,
arched, pale or dark, the Frieda Kahlos, John L. Lewises—
and then the nose—aquiline, snub, pinched
or potato, and I'm working on hands—ah, the gorgeous hands
of Frans Hals—fondling a dog, holding a sword,
plucking a lute, tipping over a glass, hand on heart, fist
on fat waist of pewter taffeta, gloved hand
holding a glove—will I ever plumb the depths of your mystery?
Probably not, just as I will never understand
why I love to read about golf, because I don't play,
have never watched a game on TV, don't know
the rules, but I love to read about the big money tournaments,
the wacky players, the gods and goddesses
of the 18 holes, and what is love anyway but an unexplainable
infatuation that turns into a living creature
you find yourself sleeping beside, eating dinner with
and talking about what you read in the newspapers,
which are a double-tiara royal waste of time, but I read
two every day and talk about art shows in Barcelona,
plays in New York, restaurants in London, the peccadillos
of local politicians with my husband,
who when I first met him looked more like Michelangelo's
David than Donatello's, and he doesn't play golf
or draw, but he does wait for me while I sketch a Van Gogh
self-portrait with pastels or a café tabletop
with black ink or a cat in a window or my own feet,
wasting time in his own way but then, of course,
his name is David or, as they pronounce it in Italy, DAH-vee-day,
slayer of Goliath, lover of Bathsheba, poet
of the Psalms, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,
a bronze boy with a giant's head resting under his foot.