nuns and nudity.

I wonder about these saints

with their large dark eyes

and ever accompanying light.

It shocks me how they sit

so still, so composed

with their flagrant exposure

a curve a line a dot

and a swatch of cloth hanging forgotten

off their serene shoulders

lit in the light of their holiness

In the street I would turn away

attempt to minimize their shame

by covering them with my eyelids

drawing darkness over them like modesty

and yet they do not mind

they sit smiling the faint smile of the vindicated, the irreproachable

and i wonder if this is what it means to be a saint

to lose so much of humanity

that they may sit revealed

not as women, but mere flesh

wrapped around their secret being

something so foreign that to come close to it

these painters in their desperate courage

must strip them of all else but their glowing skin.