Poem #16: Musica

Outside, icicles drip. Our children spin out of their heads,
so we embrace an evening excursion into the urban thaw.
We choose Musica, the bronze and limestone statue atop a knoll
in the center of Music Row’s traffic rotary. The nine nude dancers,
three or four times life-size, that once scandalized Nashville,
spring forth into dusky sky, with the center dancer floating
above the others, holding a tambourine. Beneath our muses,
we contemplate the rush-hour traffic circling round about us,
honking and screeching, drivers still befuddled in a region
more accustomed to squares. We joke about the wrecks
that must occur as drivers glue their eyes to the super-sized
genitalia, drivers who refuse even to look, on their way to church
or work, or those who take another route altogether. At the base,
my four-year-old collects sticks and stones and barely
glances up at the colossal bodies frolicking above his head.
My daughter, mesmerized, wants to touch the dancers’ toes
and ankles. She contemplates the artist and how he moved
the statue here. She pulls me to her height, grins, whispers,
“Look Mama, he made a penis,” and then bounds away from me,
mimicking the dancers’ stationary poses and exclaiming,
“Musica” to passing drivers—and the world! Finally, we drag
our inspirited children away, break back through the traffic,
little statue-cold hands in bigger hands, the four of us,
skipping and rollicking away, away, away into the darkening.