RED BEACH
after the painting by Judy Molyneux
by Sherry S.
 

It was hot, sweaty, and necessary
to cook them off, said the docs,
the spots I broiled after a salty
swim by basting my body
with baby oil for a better burn
while rotating on a sizzling spit
of land before we learned
about the ozone hole and sun-
related skin cancer, pre-SPF.

We knew so little. And it worked.
Psoriasis abated, almost
disappeared. Epidermis
cleared enough that I endured
the boredom and sweat,
kept baking until forty
brought the first of many
basal cell carcinomas
that put a stop to being cured
like a piece of meat.

Years later I walk hatted
and sun-blocked into a gallery,
encounter Red Beach, and am
surprised to feel intense heat. I
remember rotating from supine to
prone and relive the feat I performed
for hours and weeks at a time
near my low-latitude home,
oblivious to the consequences,

as the doctors were then. Do I see
a hint of Munch's Scream, his
Shriek, his Cry in the painting's
lower right? I sigh and leave
the gallery of reawakened irony,
needing something to cool and
humor me. It arrives in a recall of
the once hip Jack Kerouac ice cream
koan, glimpsed as if in the moving
'now' of a Rosetta stone.

*****

Judy Molyneux art: http://www.rebeccaart.org/