In the oldest dreams of old men, women’s breasts still
remain…medals, emblems of their love. Duane Michals
rooms full of breasts
rooms darkened to protect the photographs
a young woman holding her shirt up
with her teeth,
on her head a rhinestone diadem
old breasts, empty, pendulous
cactus bud breasts,
pears as breasts,
breasts over Yosemite Falls
the Arbus waitress at a nudist camp,
hers pert and tanned, her order book
tucked into her apron pocket
I’m remembering nursing Kristy—
that night coming home in the car,
the perfect arc of the Sonoma moon in the sky
I’m thinking of tipis, yurts, hogans, kivas
of California tule houses,
of duomos and geodesic domes
I’m thinking of the crescent scar
on my now slightly smaller right breast
of the clinical words:
lumpectomy, mastectomy,
of Rachael Carson whose breasts were burned
with an x-ray machine, the treatment that didn’t save her life
of how that little scar saved mine
and how lucky that was
I’m thinking of all the women who get treatment
too late
or not at all
for a while, in that dimly lit gallery in Florence,
I wandered in the world of the breast:
That Instable Object of Desire
© Judy Bebelaar
