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.
Down at the church my flower girl sits. Legs innocent, apart.
I make the picture puzzle fit to start your heart.
My golden sable brushes drift the soft inside of her arm.
Her chin I tilt, her breasts I lift. I mean no harm.
I mean no harm. I mean……