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January Gill O’Neil elaborates…

October 15, 2018 By Jenna Beck Leave a Comment

THE CATHEDRAL

—After Rodin’s The Cathedral

I watch my daughter imitate

the pose of Rodin’s Cathedral.

Her arms curved in slow gyration.

It is her way of understating

the dark bronze, how two arms

can captivate the imagination

in their dizzying swirl,

find balance between

light and shadows. In truth,

the hands are both right hands

turning in on themselves, an architecture

almost sacred, serpentine, yet protective

of the space within, of what the

bronze cannot hold. My daughter bends

uncomfortably away from me, resistant, as if

her whole body is questioning

what it means to be a girl.

She sees—maybe

for the first time—what is there

and what is not from the hollow

her hands make, all the empty angles

that never touch,

the almost-grasp of the intimate.

Her wrists slight and glistening

 

with summer’s patina,

her fingertips conjure her being

and becoming,

body and soul

closing and opening

at the same time.

 

A few years ago, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem hosted an expansive exhibit of sculptor Auguste Rodin. My daughter and I fell in love with his sculpture, The Cathedral. We were enthralled. And while she moved on, there was something intimate about two hands almost-grasping. It seemed to be the perfect metaphor for us as she enters her teenage years and we enter a new phase of our relationship.

 

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