Woman With Outstretched Arms, by Gail DiMaggio

Photo by Nowshad Arefin on Unsplash.

Woman with Outstretched Arms
​
Close to naked under
a northern noon--
 
a sturdy, muscled creature,
back straight, palms down, ready
 
for the dive. Hers is a body
escaped from youth—taut
 
and accustomed to its own uses.
Under this porous sky
 
she is the column
of a forgotten temple,
 
a fletched arrow aimed
past the cobalt surface
 
and into the wreck. Shadow climbs
the left quadricep, 
 
and one last time considering
the distribution of weight, she
 
points her hands toward prayer
and springs.
 
Like a hawk—she falls
free.

Gail DiMaggio

This poem was written in response to Graham Nickson's painting, Bather With Outstretched Arms ll​. The beautiful photograph shown here is a placeholder, generously provided by Nowshad Arefin through Unsplash, but you can see the original inspiration for this ekphrasis here.

Gail DiMaggio lives and writes in Concord NH. Her work has appeared most recently in Salamander, Slipstream and the Tishman Review. In 2017, her book, Woman Prime, was chosen by Jericho Brown for the Permafrost Poetry Prize and was released in Feb. 2018 by Alaska University Press.