Clawfoot Tub

March 28 2017

A white porcelain tub.

Standing free

in a high-ceiling room

filled with natural light.

Its hard enamel gloss

and soft ivory finish.

Its smooth curves

as if something organic, living.

How it cradles a body

in all its prickly edgy distress;

hard bone, under thin skin,

sharp elbows

knotted neck.

On old-fashioned tub

on ornamental feet

in which it's long enough to stretch

all the way out,

deep enough to sink

down to its depths,

eyes closed

body at rest.

Not quite sure

where water begins

one's boundaries end.

A hot soaking tub

suitable for naked creatures

with smooth impervious skin.

Who began life fully immersed,

and can trace our long line of descent

back to the sea;

our forbears, pelagic

our blood still salt.

Ending the day

by scented candle, a capella chants

in a tub big enough for two;

slippery skin, leg-on-leg

weightlessly spooning.

           ~~~~~~~~~~~

Or a tepid shower, in a narrow stall

under needle-sharp spray.

Slick tile, surgical white

reflects bright fluorescent light.

The white noise of water

echoing-off,

a grinding fan, bearings shot

drowning out his voice.

I was reading the usual personal essay on the back page of the Globe, and it ended with a woman taking her customary end-of-day soak in a hot relaxing tub. It brought to mind what a foreign experience this is for me: I never take baths; and probably haven't since I was a small child, when showers were for grown-ups.

At the risk of stereotyping, I suspect this is a gendered thing: that men by and large prefer showers, while women bathe. A “hot soaking tub” sounds immediately appealing. But then I think of sitting in my own dirty tepid water feeling bored, and it quickly loses its allure.

Nevertheless, the tempting ambience of her hot soaking tub inspired me to write. But it felt dishonest to write in the first person, presumably about me. So the poem became more descriptive than narrative, more detached than intimate. It takes until the sudden turn in the final stanza to really introduce emotion and a sense of story into the thing. I resisted the urge to over-write – the needle-sharp spray could have been flaying his naked skin; his voice could instead have been sobs – in order to leave it to let the reader make the story her own.