Viewing Kershisnik’s Nativity
A child, a little girl of four,
a balled string of curiosity,
had to touch the canvas
where an angel in white,
turning from the Nazarene,
looked out to jubilate.
Who could blame her?
The angel flowed in a choir
of angels, a river of white robe
that swam around the Holy Child,
as stunning as the melting snowcap
of Timpanogos under sunlight.
Oils of the hand soil the paint,
the mother explained, dull the color.
But what if the hand turned luminous
instead, absorbed that seraphic dazzle
until it glowed like the moon?
What if the milky light coursed ahead
to the girl’s heart, flooded the body,
until finally it lifted and swirled her,
heel to crown, into the painting
to join the anthem? What then?
Isn’t that how art will touch back?
Swallow the spirit whole forever?
– First published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (Fall 2015) –
Douglas Talley received a BFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University. After graduation, he lived in Rome and Naples, Italy for two years offering volunteer service for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Upon return to the States, he attended and graduated from the University of Akron School of Law and practiced law privately for several years before joining a small consulting firm, which among other work, took him to Moscow, Berlin, Vienna, Prague and Rome to locate records of life insurance policies and other assets confiscated by the Nazi government from Jewish victims of the Holocaust. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and his poems have appeared in The American Scholar, Midwest Poetry Review, Hellas and other journals. In 2019 he received an MFA in creative writing from Ashland University with recent publications from his thesis appearing in The Cimarron Review and Literature and Belief. A first book of poems, Adam’s Dream, was released by Parables Publishing in 2011. He and his wife April, an MFA graduate in fiction at Seton Hill University, are the parents of seven children.
