The Little Flower Girl

Down at the church the flower girl sits. legs innocent, apart.
I make the picture puzzle fit to start your heart.
Painted sister stopped beside. a word upon her saintly lip.
Perhaps admonishing the child inside the open slip.

I don't know where she might go when she runs home at night.
It's for the best: I wouldn't rest when I turned out the light.
No little flower girl singing in my troubled dream----
Just an old man's model in a pose from a magazine.

I have touched that face a dozen times before. and I have let my pencil run.
Laid down washes on a foreign shore, under a hot and foreign sun.
My best sable brushes drift the soft inside of her arm.
Her chin I tilt, her breasts I lift. I mean no harm.

I close the door. she is no more until the next appointed hour.
Northeastern light push back the night: painted promises in store.
No little flower girl singing in my troubled dream----
Just an old man's model in a pose from a magazine.