The Child’s Bath

No one steps into this quiet room
where sunlight and a mother’s love
warm her clammy skin.
Foreshortened faces, familiarity of flesh.
Among wild constellations of clashing colour,
a child’s pale body beams
in moonlike nudity.

Squeeze of foot matched
by press of thigh –
the angle bats the eye back
and forth, a silent carriage
return. No Madonna and boy child here –
just the newness of old love.